Fishless Cycling Isnt Fun

[Leitch]

Okay i will admit it. Im an impatient person, but i have done my best to hang in there but its getting stupid.
Ive been cycling for about 2 months and nitrites havent shown any sign of dropping.
Ive did a large water change to bring them down and im going to give it another week to see if anything happens.
If nothing happens then im going to buy a couple of fish on saturday and do water changes everyday. Im so sick of looking at this empty tank.
And before anyone says anything; no i do not believe in cruelty to animals and im not just doing this because i want to harm the fish. I tried to do it the sciency way but it hasnt worked, so im giving it one last week and then im getting fish.
At least the ammonia is being processed correctly, so it wont have been a total waste of time.

Well anyway i made this thread to ask if i should add all three of my platies at once to my 60L or do it once a week. I will be doing water changes everyday.

I would appreciate it if no-one asked me questions like "whats your tank stats?" or "are you sure your doing it right?" because i am 100% sure that i am. I am giving it another week.

The whole thing is making me look stupid infront of the rest of my family, for 2 months i have had nothing but a 60L water storage facility in my room. Its got 7 days, and then no more artificial environments.

 

[littlest]

If you think fishless cycling isn't fun, you won't like cycling with fish at all. I'm not saying this to have a go at you, but while fishless cycling is boring and frustrating, cycling with fish is hard work, frustrating, and heart-breaking. You will be spending a hell of a lot of time doing water changes and you won't get much time to enjoy your fish because you will be working so hard trying to keep them alive. I cycled with fish with my first tank and it was a nightmare. So much work and stress, and the fish eventually died. The whole experience put me off for a while and it was over 6 months before I set the tank up again, this time doing it fishlessly.

I urge you to reconsider. Cycling is known to take more than 2 months. It doesn't mean that it is not working.

It taking too long or you looking "stupid" in front of your family are not good enough reasons to abandon your beliefs about animal cruelty.

 

[rdd1952]

Before you give up, try doing a 100% water change. That will lower the nitrites to 0 (or very close). If you have bacteria to process nitrite, it should easily be able to process 4 or 5 ppm in a day. How high are your nitrates?

 

[Leitch]

My nitrates are 10. Always have been.

 

[dwarfgourami]

I'm really sorry you're having such an offputting experience. Having tried both with fish and fishless in my day, I'd have to agree with littlest though: fishless cycling was boring but cycling with fish was heartbreaking.

 

[jojomojo1971]

Have you checked the pH, if your pH drops to below 5ph it can stall the cycling process, we had nitriite for ages, then tested the ph it was 5.5, brought the ph up, cycle was finished in 2 days.

 

[Jonno]

I'd have to agree with leich - i mirror his post however i have been doing mine for 1.5 months now. I was going to put fish in this weekend, with my ammonia/nitrite being processed in about 18 hours - however on friday night the nitrite had STALLED COMPLETELY. I've done another 90% water change yesterday bringing PH up to 7.6 - readded ammonia - which IS being processed, however the nitrite still isn't going down.

Fish are going in this weekend fishless cycled or not.

If i was to do this fishless lark again, or if i had to advise someone, i'd probably recommend that they do the fishless cycling until they start seeing a significant amount of nitrates appear, and then waterchange and add fish.

One question - does anyone know approx how much PPM ammonia would a 50% - 75% stocked tank create in a 24 hour period?

 

[Leitch]

Im still giving this another week, like i said.

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

no one said it would or should be fun.

i do understand where your coming from Leitch but then when you've spent a month or two going through fishless cycling a few weeks more isn't that long.

My ammonia is being processed now quickly (4ppm over 24 hours) and am monitoring the levels of Nitrite. Hopefully, they'll reduce nice and quickly - estimated they're around 100ppm last night.

 

[Leitch]

Nah i didnt expect it to be fun Just a topic title.

 

[Tobigara]

i can't say too many bad things about fish in cycling. i did it with my first tank not knowing a thing about fish and i only lost 1. and that 1 died before i got home from the lfs. as long as you're not afraid to do all the required water changes it's not any more deadly/dangerous to fish than fishless cycling.

 

[Leitch]

Im fully prepard for it.

But still, another week of fishless.

 

[darkwolf29a]

i can't say too many bad things about fish in cycling. i did it with my first tank not knowing a thing about fish and i only lost 1. and that 1 died before i got home from the lfs. as long as you're not afraid to do all the required water changes it's not any more deadly/dangerous to fish than fishless cycling.

That was the way I did mine too. LOL And, honestly, I didn't loss either of my fish...I bought 2.

Do you have any friends with fish tanks? You could speed up the cycle BIG time if you can get some media or substrate from an existing fish tank. Honestly, that's the method I use now. I have 14 fish tanks up and running. I never cycle tanks any more. I buy my filters before my tanks even now. I start the new media in my biggest HOB, with my current media, for 2 weeks before building a new tank. Once that's done...it's only a little bit of substrate bacteria left to "cycle"

 

[doubledee]

I kept fish years ago and when I returned I was new to all this fishless cycling malarky. I too was ready to give up but that was due to starting the cycle about a week before I got back from a trip. I was off for 3 weeks then away again and it hadn't cycled. When I returned, I started it all again and after 2 weeks (IIRC) I was ready to put fish in even though it wasn't fully cycled (I had a lot of plants so they would have processed the small amount of ammonia from 2 or 3 fishes easily). However, I thought I would stick with it and got my brother to give me a small sponge filter from his tank to put in my external and voila', it was done in 2 days. Two months is waaaaaaaaaaay too long and I admire your patience but I would have given up long ago and got some seeded filter material. It really does work, so I would urge you to get some filter material or gravel from anyone, even from a LFS and wait a couple days more. I can't guarantee it will work but I think it would.

 

[Leitch]

Thanks doubledee but my lfs refuses to give me such media.