Help With Fishless Cycle

[Autonerd]

hubby is barely tolerating this hobby at the moment, he really enjoys having the fish but not my obsession with water testing and research haha.

Got something similar from my spouse, who had a bet going that we'd never get fish in our tank. (I won.) Fishless cycling took 5 or 6 weeks but it was well worth it (those daily water changes with fish-in were a royal pain in the butt). I used 4 ppm ammonia and one helping of the bacteria-in-a-bottle that my LFS sold me to kick-start things, testing every 24 hrs then ever 12 when things sped up.

Watch that pH, towards the end of my cycle (last week or so) mine kept crashing from 7.6ish down to 6.0 which would stop ammonia processing. A 30% water change would get things going again. I found that the tank was processing ammonia from 4 ppm to 0 in a fairly short amount of time, but getting nitrates to drop to 0 in 12 hrs took much, much longer. Again, well worth the wait as it's nice to be able to add fish and not have the worries. In fact now my biggest concern is adding fish too slowly and starving my lovely bacteria colony!

Aaron

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Hello All! Thanks for the further input.

It did take me a while to get the pH up I was adding at 1/4 tsp at a time though I was worried about getting it too high. At first, after about 1/2 tsp it actually dropped to lower than 6.8 so I got a little frustrated but it's up to 7.6 now. Should I add more bicarb to get it to 8.0? I've added 1 tsp in total up to now.

My ammonia is now at 3.0 from what was probably closer to 6.0 than 5.0 when I last dosed the tank. I won't dose it that high next time

We'll get there eventually and I'll keep dropping by to let you know how I'm getting on (and to ask more questions I'm sure!)

 

[Prime Ordeal]

Yes add more bicarb, try to get it to at least pH8. Don't worry, there's no real problem in overdosing bicarb, only in raising it too quickly.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Hello All,

I just thought I would update you on my progress. I'm going through ammonia really quickly now, probably at the every 12 hours stage. My nitrates and nitrites are off the chart and have been for 5 days (having started to get readings on them 7 days ago).

I am still struggling to keep the pH up though, who knows how much bicarb I've added up to now. It just keeps dropping right down, I've barely been able to get it up to 8.0 at all and when I do it only stays there a couple days. Today it has taken a real nosedive and is down to 6.8. My water just does not want to have a decent pH!

As always, thanks for the support

 

[Rajinder]

Hi,
I'm new to fish keeping and have recently bought a tank. i have set everything up and it has been running for a week. how do I cycle the tank without adding fish? I have added some liquid bacteria into the water and some fish food but have not tested the water yet. I don't really know what I need to do to check for ammonia. Please help.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Hi,
I'm new to fish keeping and have recently bought a tank. i have set everything up and it has been running for a week. how do I cycle the tank without adding fish? I have added some liquid bacteria into the water and some fish food but have not tested the water yet. I don't really know what I need to do to check for ammonia. Please help.

Hi there,

Check out this topic, it's really helpful http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/113861-fishless-cycling/