Fishless Cycling Problems

[Am29]

Hi,

I purchased a 60 litre tropical setup about a month ago and followed the instructions given by the shop. I was advised that I should be ready for fish after about 7/8 days. So took some water down to get it tested and was told it was fine although the PH (7.5) wasn't right for tropical fish but goldfish would be fine. So I bought 2 goldfish but unfortunatly both died after a few days. I came across articles on cycling online and realised that I was given very bad advice by the store.

I decided to start again so did some water changes, purchased BioMature and the API test kit. I was advised that I need to keep adding the ammonia till I got a reading of 5ppm, I've stopped adding the ammonia as it looks like its reaching the 8ppm mark,
problem is i'm yet to see any reading of nitrites.

Should I have seen Nitrites by now? Am I doing something wrong?

I've been cycling for about 2/3 weeks and have the tank for about 6 weeks in total i'm beginning to lose hope.

Would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

 

[Gilli]

you are ok - just keep going! Tank is going to take at least 6-8 weeks before it is cycled!

If your tank is going to be planted, you can and should add the live plants during the cycle (unlike fish, plants actually like ammonia as long as its level isn't way too high), the temperature should be around 25-27°C.

Start small, only a couple of teaspoons of ammonia for a small tank around 40 liters (10G), or use about a 1/2 cup for large tanks around 200 liters. Let it sit for an hour or so to allow the ammonia to circulate. Test. Your goal is to get a reading of about 3 to 5 mg/L (or ppm, it's the same). If you have zero ammonia readings, add a bit more to the water. Not too much...you are using a toxic chemical afterall. Let the tank sit. Test. Keep testing and adding SMALL amounts of ammonia until you get a reading in your test kit. When you have a reading, you may want to add Cycle or StressZyme if you've decided to use these products. Keep in mind that the commercial bacteria is bottled in a non-toxic form of ammonia, so if you use them, your ammonia readings will be higher than if you hadn't used them. This is OK. You may discover your ammonia levels will go over 6 ppm (parts per million), which is fatal for all fish, but this is OK too, since you don't have any fish in the tank.

As soon as you notice high levels of ammonia, stop adding ammonia to the tank. Now is the part where your patience is tested! Let things run their course, and keep testing the water. Once a day is fine, or once every other day. After a few days, you can begin testing for nitrites as well as ammonia. If you aren't getting any readings for nitrites at all, that's OK. These things take time. Don't do any water changes yet, and continue to let everything sit. When your ammonia starts dropping, you should definitely be able to read some nitrites. After the ammonia reading drops to zero, start adding just a little bit more ammonia again every day, just a teaspoon or so...not enough to force the reading above zero again, but just enough to keep the newly grown "ammonia-eating" bacterial colony happy.

When you notice your nitrites are spiking (reach a maximum and start going down) you'll know you're almost done! In my experience, the tanks have finished cycling within 3 or 4 days of the nitrite spike, but the amount of time will vary for everyone. When your nitrites drop to zero AND your ammonia is zero and stays that way for a few consecutive days, then your tank is cycled! Do a large water change, around 50% to 80%. Do not change any filter media, and do not vacuum the gravel during this water change. Refill with fresh, conditioned water, and lower your heater to 25°C or whatever temperature is best for the fish you intend to keep. Let everything chug for several hours or overnight. Test the water for both ammonia and nitrites again. If everything is still zero, the tank is cycled and you're ready to add fish!

 

[festo]

Your instructions for cycling seem to be different
to Oldman and Waterdrop,there seems to be conflisting advice,
so whose right?
or am i missreading it.?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Hi Festo, the link in my signature for fishless cycling is the one usually recommended on this forum. it also directs you to a calculator which will tell you exactly how much ammonia to add, we usually prefer to be a little more precise than the method quoted above.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with MW. I think one of the things that happens with a complicated process that has a lot of variability is that there are a lot of method variations that will work in a given case or two or ten. I think the processes that we often describe here in the beginners section end up getting a bit more complicated because we see so many cases. After hundreds of them we end up making various additions to the process to handle some of the less common things that we've seen or to help with some of the problems we run across a lot.

~~waterdrop~~