Help With Fishless Cycle

[Konami]

hi, need a hand with my first fishless cycle. i have been at it for a week now. I first started by getting my amonia up to i think it was 4-5 ppm. And then added the same amount everyday. I now think this may have been a bit much as now a week in i have these results:

Amonia - 8ppm
Nitrate - 5ppm
nitrite - 0.50ppm

Have i added to much amonia?

Am i doing it right?

Any advice?

Thanks in advance
john

 

[smurfyy_2k3]

i have never done a fishless cycle before but i really think this is normal

 

[canarsie11]

You are on the right track. Keep on doing what you are doing? Ammonia will fall stick with it

 

[crawfordej]

I have just been through the fishless cycle with my tank, from all I read up, the idea is to add amonia at a regular level daily until it reads about 4.5 or nitrate starts to show. once that happens you halve the amount of amonia you put in until your 2 spikes have been and gone and your amonia and nitrite return to 0. Then leave for 24-48 hours before adding any fish. If your amonia levels get too high then just do a 20 or 30% water change and carry on as you were.

In my tank I was only putting in about 5ml amonia a day, but this can be missleading as you anomia might be a stronger solution that the one I used.

Keep going with it, the more people learn about the fishless cycle the better. I now have a fully stocked tank and never had a single amonia or nitrite spike since putting them in

Good luck

 

[Squid]

First off. here is RDD's thread..


http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...3861&hl=methods

have a look in there.. i did the add and wait method, so i did not add the same ammount every day.. so my ammonia never got up to 8ppm

You start off with 5-6 ppm... Although you do worry that you added too much and anything over 4ppm just looks pretty darn green in my test kits..

I used the following calculation to work out how much to put in (This may be different depending on your tank size and ammonia solution. You can always do tests in a bucket, and then multiply the bucket size to your tank size.)

so.. 5ppm

if 1 litre is 1000 ml, then 1000 litres is 1 million ml...

then 5ml of pure ammonia is 5 ppm in that case..

so

100,000 would require 0.5 ml

10,000 (ten litres) would require 0.05ml of ammonia

the solution is only about 10% ammonia, so that would need 0.5ml of my solution

so i tested this and it went green (somewhere over 4ppm, but not entirely sure)

so..

my 180 litre tank would require 18 * 0.5 =9ml of my solution..

Good Luck
SQUID

 

[Konami]

Thanks guys. Really helped me out. Today i measured it at:

ammonia - 7
Nitrate - 5
Nitrite - between 5-10ppm

Hopefully all going well.

I think i made an error in typing up my first Nitrate level. i put it a 5ppm but it was 0.5ppm i think.