How Much To Dose?

[XeroTolerance]

Hello everybody. I'm currently cycling my 10 gallon tank (fishless). I was wondering what you do when you reach stage 2. If you don't know it's when your ammonia drops for the very first time and you need to re-dose. This leads me to my question, if I dosed 4ppm and the first time it dropped should I dose 3ppm? I hear many people dosing 3ppm in tutorial, but I also hear many people staying at 4ppm. I know the reason behind that. I was just curious.

Thanks for reading.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

The thought behind dropping the dose is to keep the A-bacs (ammonia processing bacteria) "happy" while the N-bacs (nitrite processing bacteria) catch up. Each 1 ppm ammonia becomes 2.7 ppm nitrite, so it can build up fast, especially if you don't drop the dosage. And nitrite levels above 8ppm start to encourage the wrong sort of bacteria.


I recommend dropping the dose to about 2-3ppm (2.5ppm, ideally) and this will give the N-bacs a chance to catch up. Once the nitrite can stay on the chart at your testing time, slowly increase the ammonia dose back up to 4ppm. Use your initial dose amount to determine the proper amount for 2.5ppm and incrementally increase it back up to 4-5ppm by the time you hit the qualifying week (5-7 days of double zero readings at 12 hours).

 

[XeroTolerance]

Thanks for your help. Putting it that way it makes it much more clearer.

I dosed 4ppm first so I'll start adding ammonia at 2.5ppm.