I Am Starting My First Fishless Cycle!

[julielynn47]

I have never done this before.  But I am going to give it go and hope for the best.  I am doing this on the 10 gallon.  I figure it will be a good learning experience for me before I do the 75 gallon.
 
This is the tank that, for whatever reasons, has an ammonia and nitrite level already starting with no livestock in it.  Still can't figure that out but I decided why not start the cycle now.  I have had the biological media in the filter housing of my 55 gallon for about a month now. I am hoping some beneficial bacteria has begun to grow on it.
 
Only time will tell...so...here I go!

 

[julielynn47]

I realize that I could simply take a portion of my established media out of the 55 gallon and jump start things. But I don't plan on doing that for the 75 gallon.
 
Call me crazy, but I am afraid that I will transfer some of the black algae from the  55 to the 75 and that is the last thing I want to do.  I even plan on getting a separate python water changer for the 75 gallon.  This will be a test for me to see try out this fishless cycling. So this is why I am not seeding with establish media.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Hmm, so the plan is to cycle a 10 gallon tank with seeded media from the 55 gal tank, basically as a test run as to how cycle works for you.
 
You say you already have ammonia and nitrite readings in this little tank?
It is not specified what these readings are.
 
This could be down to a couple of things, ammonia and nitrite may already be present in your tap water, so may be worth testing the tap water so you know where you stand on that side of things.
I wonder if you have plants in that 10 gal? if so, then decaying plant matter could give ammonia reading, also do not forget plants will bring in some bacterias that you need and may already be converting some of that ammonia to nitrite, so that is another option.
And finally, it could be your test kit giving false readings, especially at low levels and down to possible contamination during the testing process or simple human error, lots of possible factors.
 
Am assuming you have a half decent test kit and a source of ammonia already with some idea of how much dosage of ammonia you will need, this forum has a calculator for this and very simple to use.
 
Might be an idea to have pen and paper or a notebook to record everything that is done in regards to your cycling process, this can be especially useful to keep track of how our cycle is progressing rather than relying on memory.
 
As for Black Beard/Brush algae, this is a real pain to get rid of, but generally speaking its is usually down to certain factors in your tank that is causing BBA to
grow. Could be lighting, flow, too high of certain nutirents in water column, sunlight, so many variable to be honest.
 
It is possible to transfer BBA from one tank to another via filter media, but would have thought it fairly unlikely but its a good question though.

 

[julielynn47]

Exactly...I know if I use the biological media I put in the filter of the 55 I am cheating a little, but I didn't think of doing this at the time.
 
I have liquid API master kit.  It is reading fine. I have been using it for awhile now.  The readings out of the tap have no ammonia or nitrite. So that is okay.  Using seeded media from the 55 was the idea, but I am leaning towards just putting the 10 gallons media back in the 10 gallon, it is in in the 55 now, and just basically doing it from scratch.  Unless of course the bacteria is already present on the media, which is possible.  But this is just basically a test run of fishless cycling before I start the 75.
 
I have given up trying to figure out why the black algae is in the 55.  I have done everything I know to do except empty it, clean it, pour boiling water on everything that can survive it, throw all the gravel away, throw all the plants away and just act like it is a brand new set up.....I do not want to do that.    I vac the gravel, I do water changes all the time, I bought new lights, I got the phosphate remover, I am just going to try to deal with it and keep it at bay instead of fretting over it any longer. But I do not want to knowingly transfer it to the new 75
 
The readings before I added the ammonia yesterday were -
 
Nitrite - .25
Ammonia - .25

 

[julielynn47]

I started cycling the tank on August 1st and I have already been able to add ammonia twice. I think it is going to cycle pretty quickly because I put some bio glass out of the filter housing of the 55 in it.  The bio glass has been in the filter of the 55 since 2007, so it has a lot of beneficial bacteria already on it.  That is cheating a little in my trial of  doing a fishless cycle, but I admit, I am impatient.
 
The ammonia yesterday read .25  So I dosed it with a full dose.  This morning it is only reading .50 and it has not even been 24 hours yet since the big dose.   I don't know if it is moving along well  or not , but it seems to me to be so.   Nitrites are high, but if I understand the cycling page that is the way it is supposed to be.  

 

[Ch4rlie]

Sounds good so far.
 
Sometimes cycles go faster than usual due to certain addition to the tank, like plants, parts from other filters and even a squeeze of filter media can do wonders for fishless cycles
 
High nitrite is normal in fishless cycles, though do not want it so high it causes issues with the cycle but thats something you need to keep any eye on.
 
Its the nitrite thats the slowest in dropping to zero so do not add ammonia until the nitrite drops to the level where you are on the fishless cycle guide article.

 

[julielynn47]

I am sure I will mess up somewhere, or already have messed up somewhere. But now I am just waiting. The ammonia is steadily dropping but not the nitrites. So I am trying to be patient. But I will also be honest, I check the water daily. I can't just skip two days, LOL.  

 

[julielynn47]

I went and checked the schedule for fishless cycling and I guess I did do it correctly. Thank goodness... The ammonia was "clearly under 75ppm and nitrite is clearly over 2ppm it is time to add more ammonia ( dose #2)"
 
So far so good.  And tonight the ammonia is now .25 ppm and the nitrite has dropped a little.  So it seems to be going good.  I know it helped a lot that I had the bio filter in my 55 for awhile and also put some of the bio glass that was in the 55 into this filter.

 

[julielynn47]

The ammonia is at 0 this morning!!  Nitrites are somewhere between 2 and 5.  There is no color coding between those two numbers.

"two consecutive every other day ammonia readings of 0", would mean 4 days from now for its maintenance feeding.   I hope I am getting this correct

 

[Ch4rlie]

Looks good to me.
 
Patience required in high doses for cycling