Fishless Cycling With Carbon

[GrassHopper]

I have been using the product CYCle to do a fishless cycle of my 44 gallon tank. I have been following the instructions and adding the proper amouny of "product" but after 2 months, my Ammonia level is still .025 and I know I can't get fish in there until it's 0. Two things that I have not thought of until now are that I have not been doing any water changes and I have a carbon pad in my external cannister filter. My heat is set to 85 and I have good aeration.

Will having the carbon filter in there hurt the process? I planned to take it out. I am not even sure why I added it. I would think they would not filter out bacterial right?
Should I be more patient or switch methods?
Should I do water changes also?

Thansk for the help!

 

[waterdrop]

Lots and lots of newcomers are actually here in the "New to the Hobby" forum precisely because these "bottled bacteria" products simply didn't work for them. That's why the procedure of fishless cycling with pure household ammonia is such a main theme here and getting help with it is so prominent in so many threads I think.

[Note that an aspect of this that keeps the confusion rolling is that a very small number of the products do seem to help a bit a very small number of times, which puts contrasting stories out there. Its my personal opinion that there are smart scientists out there, like Tim Hovanec, that may indeed come up with a successful way to to bottled bacteria some day and that a couple of the refridgerated products do probably work sometimes. But I also feel that the vast majority of beginners get burned by these things either by wasting their money or wasting their time.]

So as you can see, I am heavily in favor of beginners simply accepting the straight-forward practical-science method of using pure household ammonia to fishlessly cycle a tank and leaving this dream of magic instant cycling to the future. The reliable (if sometimes slow!) method most all of us use is the "Add & Wait" method written up by rdd1952 in our working cycling document that's pinned at the top of the "New to the Hobby" forum here. Its pretty simple to follow but there are details that can make your experience even better if you start up your own fishless cycling thread here and let the members do it along with you in a back and forth dialog.

Your other questions are simply caused by your fishless cycling method not working. If you're method were working it wouldn't matter that you have carbon in there, it wouldn't actually hurt anything and the bacteria would grow on it. It happens though, that you are correct in wondering about it as it is not optimal as a biomedia. Its a chemical media and meant to be pulled off the shelf for special purposes like removing meds, tannins and other things. Its only effective about 3 days and then is ready to be tossed. A ceramic or sponge media would be better in its place for a filter meant for everyday functioning. Also you are correct that water changes are not needed during fishless cycling unless you are in later stages and have some particular problem like a pH crash. And your temp is close to the optimal 84F in my opinion, so you've shown that you are careful in your preparations -- you'd be a perfect person to read our articles and get involved in doing a "real" fishless cycle.

~~waterdrop~~
welcome to tff!

 

[OldMan47]

I don't know what is in the Cycle product but by now I would have expected to have a complete cycle using nothing more than pure ammonia and a test kit. Water changes are not usually needed but if you have low pH it can slow or stop the cycling process. If the pH of your tap water is higher, a water change can sometimes help by bringing the pH up some. Carbon in the filter is no problem at all. On the other hand some filter manufacturers combine carbon with other products like zeolite which can stop the cycle from happening. If you are showing any ammonia, any zeolite in the filter is exhausted so it is no longer a problem.
I would suggest that you read through the thread on fishless cycling and see if it gives you any clues about what you may be doing differently than we normally suggest. There is a link to it in my signature area.