How Long Till Cycle Done

[modaz]

how long am i expected to wait for as a rough idea, its a 300 L

 

[scorphonic]

It just depends on whether you wish to do the cycle using mature media from someone elses filter system to advance the cycle in your tank, there are people on here that donate media so search the forums for the necessary topic. If you do manage to get someone to donate a few liters of filter squeezings then your cycle may only take two weeks. Mine took one week from the day I added in the bacteria from another tank.

Expect to spend anything up to 6 weeks if you do fishless cycling with no outside addition of media. Generally it takes less than this since you can determine how high you keep the level of ammonia through your own additions. You should really aim to get ammonia up to around 6ppm. Once it starts to go down and you see the levels of nitrite increase you can just keep your ammonia at a maximum level of 4 ppm if you so wish. No need to keep it at 6 ppm at this stage. When your levels of ammonia and nitrite are going to zero within 12 hours or less and your nitrate has risen then your tank is cycled. Remember that if you dont do a water change and introduce fish within a few hours you will have to add in some more ammonia to keep your bacteria in the filter alive. Chose your time wisely, if it takes 5 hours for your chosen level of ammonia to go to zero (and for nitrite to go to zero) then do a quick water change after the 5 hours and you can go to the pet store and pick up the fish you have chosen previously and bring them home to the new tank. The new fish will supply the ammonia necessary to keep the bacteria alive.

You will hear people advising you that you must only add in a few fish at a time. This is complete rubbish. Since you have done a fishless cycle and have kept the levels of ammonia high throughout the cycling process you can rest assured that there is more than enough bacteria present in your filter to handle a full fish load. Just remember not to overstock the tank as your filter may have difficulty in passing the water through to the bacteria in the filter quick enough and so the levels of dangerous ammonia and nitrite will rise in the tank itself. So long as you dont overstock, the tank will handle an immediate introduction of alot of fish.

I cycled my tank last monday, tuesday I introduced 7 tiger barbs and now I have 15 more fish in there (22 in total). I have not seen any ammonia or nitrite present in the tank so the fishless cycle for me produced enough bacteria to handle all these fish!!

Get somebody to give you mature bacterial medium...you'll be happy that you did!!

O I'm sure its important that I mention that I over filter the tank with an external filter (700L/hr) and an internal filter (600L/hr)

I'm using a 180L tank.