Fishless Cycling Question

[wcohen]

I'm getting ready to cycle my 60 US gallon aquarium and I've read the article on fishless cycling at Aquahobby.com/Age of Aquariums. Several forum members recommend this article. The goal is to get the ammonia up to about 3 - 5 ppm and the article and the article mentions starting off by adding about 1/2 cup of pure ammonia (which would be 4 oz).

Am I missing somthing here? With gravel and decorations, I'm figuring that I've got about 55 gallons of water in the tank. If my math is right, 1/2 cup would about 1 part in 880 - way higher than 3 - 5 ppm. Perhaps "pure ammonia" is not concentrated at 100%?

Thanks for any and all help you can provide.

Cheers!

Wayne Cohen
Morgan Hill, California, USA

 

[cowboy507]

Yes you want the ammonia level at 5 ppm, use the aquarium calculator at the top of the page to figure out how much you should add, i think it will be around 10 mL, the bottle that you bought should say a percentage on it and use that in the calculator.'
hope this helps!

 

[paulbr1]

Hi and welcome, use this - http/www.fishforums.net/aquarium-calculator.htm the cup method amount sounds like a massive amount
if your ammo is a 9.5% concentrate the amount should be around 12ml - but some good advice I was given is to test in a bucket first to check your ammo and then work out how much your tank needs from there (the 9.5% isn't always accurate).

Good luck.

Paul.

 

[wcohen]

Thank you very much Cowboy507 and paulbr1. The jug is labeled as "pure ammonia" but based on your respones, I'm sure it's diluted to some degree. I'm at work now but will check the concentration on the jug when I get home.

Thanks also for pointing me to the calculator. I've been a member of the forum for a couple years (rarely posting, though) and was not aware of it.

Thanks again!

Wayne

(Wayne Cohen)
Morgan Hill, CA, USA

 

[snowflake311]

You never really know how diluted it is. Best way to add ammonia is little at a time and test it. add 2 capfuls and test? add 2 more cap fulls and test. add 5ppm or 4ppm to start.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, you are right Wayne that the typical labeling on a lot of these household ammonia bottles is technically incorrect: pure ammonia is a very dangerous gas. What's in these bottles is aqueous ammonia and its typically almost entirely water with an ammonia concentration somewhere below 10 percent. While 9.5% concentration is quite popular in the UK, it varies quite a bit more in other locations and in these other places the percentages are often not mentioned. Concentration percentage labels are mostly misleading anyway, as the ammonia gas is volatile to some extent and the concentration will begin to vary immediately after the cap is first removed.

"Testing your way up" to get to the desired 4-5ppm for fishless cycling is a very good approach, sometimes saving you from having to water-change the concentration back down. Once you've determined the rough number of milliliters, or teaspoons, or dropper squirts or whatever you're using that raises your particular tank to the desired concentration then that's usually good enough to be pretty reliable throughout the fishless cycling process.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[wcohen]

Yes, you are right Wayne that the typical labeling on a lot of these household ammonia bottles is technically incorrect: pure ammonia is a very dangerous gas. What's in these bottles is aqueous ammonia and its typically almost entirely water with an ammonia concentration somewhere below 10 percent. While 9.5% concentration is quite popular in the UK, it varies quite a bit more in other locations and in these other places the percentages are often not mentioned. Concentration percentage labels are mostly misleading anyway, as the ammonia gas is volatile to some extent and the concentration will begin to vary immediately after the cap is first removed.

"Testing your way up" to get to the desired 4-5ppm for fishless cycling is a very good approach, sometimes saving you from having to water-change the concentration back down. Once you've determined the rough number of milliliters, or teaspoons, or dropper squirts or whatever you're using that raises your particular tank to the desired concentration then that's usually good enough to be pretty reliable throughout the fishless cycling process.

~~waterdrop~~

Thank you for the advice. The ammonia I have must be about 2.5%. This sounds weak but I experimented on a 5 gallon sample this morning and I needed about .8 ml per gallon to bring it up to 5 ppm. After that, I slowly added to the tank itself. At about 40 ml, I was at 5 ppm - consistent with my experiment. It's a 60 gallon tank but with gravel, there's really only about 55 gallons in there.

And now, the wait begins....

A little personal background:

I kept a 20 gallon tank through high school, college and after for about 12 years. Back in those days, I had never heard of fishless cycling. After about a 20 year hiatus, I got back in to the hobby about 3 1/2 years ago with a 15 gallon tank. I cycled it the traditional way (with hardy fish). It's been successful to the point that I decided (and got permission from my better half) to take the plunge into a 60 gallon. This is my first fishless cycle. I've learned a lot on this forum. Thanks to all for your help.

Wayne

Morgan Hill, CA USA

 

[waterdrop]

Good! I'm glad the aqueous ammonia concentration issue is clearing itself up now, lol.

A little personal background:

I kept a 20 gallon tank through high school, college and after for about 12 years. Back in those days, I had never heard of fishless cycling. After about a 20 year hiatus, I got back in to the hobby about 3 1/2 years ago with a 15 gallon tank. I cycled it the traditional way (with hardy fish). It's been successful to the point that I decided (and got permission from my better half) to take the plunge into a 60 gallon. This is my first fishless cycle. I've learned a lot on this forum. Thanks to all for your help.

Wayne

Hey, that's a lot like me! Its pretty interesting when you've done it that much back then to come in and find a number of seemingly fundamental practices have changed, isn't it? I've done a fair amount of reading about the fishless cycle topic and it seems that it developed in the early 1980's, which would have been in the early stages of the "Usenet", one of the predecessors of bulletin boards, the internet and forums. Some small subset of tropical fish hobbyists happened to be among the computer guys who were using Usenet and in their discussions of cycing and the nitrogen cycle they got to speculating whether straight ammonia would work and give them more control over the process. A fellow named "Chris Cow" was supposed to have been pivotal in this but I've only ever found one or two references to him. In the early days the details of the type of ammonia was argued over a lot and experiemented with a lot but eventually it was figured out that that wasn't important and simple household aqueous ammonia was fine.

The whole better understanding and communicating of information about ammonia and nitrite(NO2) poisoning and details about the nitrogen cycle being much better appreciated and understood is just a huge difference from the old days in my opinion. The better dissemination of information regarding minimum shoal sizes for many fish is also a key difference these days too. The planted tank hobby has also sprung up and completely changed a lot of the knowledge surrounding that aspect of aquaria. All in all I've found it tremendously fascinating and I hope you will too!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[wcohen]

Update:

Only about 12 days in and it's done cycling!

Before starting the cycling process I added two plants and about 15 gallons from my 15 gallon tank (5 gallons a day) and treated with Tetra Safe Start, then added ammonia up to 5 ppm. Ammonia zeroed out seven days in, Nitrite spiked at 9 days and fell to zero at 12 days. When the ammonia zeroed out I started adding 1.5 teaspoons of ammonia every day to keep the bacteria colony going. Today (day 13), ammonia and nitrite still both at zero and nitrate at about 20 (hard to read - part of a multi-test kit, but I use a ammonia specific and nitrite specefic for those tests) and changed did a 50% water change (4 gallons from the 15 gallon tank and the rest, pre-conditioned water). If everthing looks good tomorrow, the SAEs and the Dwarf Rainbows are the first in (my signature is pre-mature).

Thanks to all for their assistance.