Is my tank mid cycle?

[Pauljb123]

Hey all new to the forums, my Name is Paul and I live in the Stafford area

Ive had a couple of tanks in the past, I have a 125L now which I set up 10 days ago, the tank has live plants atm and a substrate plus some rocks and couple bits of wood. I'm using a Fluval 207 Cannister,

Since setting up the tank ive been using Stability and adding small amounts of fish food to get the ammonia going.

My PH in Stafford is high at around 8.2/8.4 and as I've used RO water in the passed and so I did yesterday add 25l of RO To bring my PH down a tad (Minerals added to the RO)

My tank over the last 3 or 4 days has been showing between 0.50ppm of ammonia and is maybe at 0.30ppm of ammonia right now.

Nitrite stays at 0 while Nitrates were at 5.0ppm 2 days ago 3.0ppm yesterday but as of today are pretty much zero or trace amounts.

The question is, is my tank still mid cycle with the plants maybe consuming the Nitrates and the ammonia just going down slowly cos im still very early in my set up?

Any feedback would be great.

Thanks Paul

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

I think you're still cycling. Generally the bacteria that metabolize ammonia show up pretty quickly, but the bacteria that metabolize nitrite generally take longer to establish. I would expect rising nitrite in the coming days. Keep testing the water.

 

[Essjay]

Fish food is not the best way to cycle a tank. It has to be broken down to make ammonia and you can't know how much ammonia is made. Using ammonia or ammonium chloride from a bottle is more reliable as you know exactly how much has been added, and if it is enough to grow the bacteria a fully stocked tank needs.

However, you mention plants - how many and fast or slow growing? When there are enough fast growing plants which are showing signs of active growth and not about to die, they will take up ammonia made by fish (once there are any). With this method, fish should be added a batch at a time to make sure the plants are coping.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Dr. Tomothy Hovqnec who is the scientist who doscovered the specific ammonia bacteria as well as the ones for nitrite in tanks has a section of fishless cycling, He suggests using ammonium chloride or ammonia for cycling. But you should read the below as it has information on using flake food for cycling. (Bold below added by me)

Using shrimp or fish food​

One of the more popular fishless cycling methods is to buy a few dead shrimp at the grocery store, cut them up into chunks and add them to the aquarium. The shrimp decay, which produces ammonia to feed the nitrifying bacteria. There are a few drawbacks with this method, one being that the hobbyist really has no way to know how much ammonia is being produced by the decaying shrimp, and the aquarium does not look very good with dead shrimp laying on the bottom. Also, the organic material of the shrimp can cause bacteria blooms which turn the aquarium water cloudy. This method works but it takes time and patience and you will probably see a spike in ammonia and nitrite if you add a medium to heavy load of fish after the initial cycling. Note that some people use flake fish food instead of shrimp but this is not recommended because flake food does not have much organic material compared to shrimp and so does not add a lot of ammonia to the water, but you can use cut fish instead of shrimp.

Also, I am not a fan of Stability, it only contains spores and the bacteria we have in our tanks do not do this, they reproduce by dividing and do not form spores. The bacteria you need are found in Dr. Hovanec's One and Only or Tetra's Safe Start (or Safe Start+). I do not think the One and Only is available in the UK but, "you can buy Tetra SafeStart products in the UK from many online aquatic retailers like Amazon UK, Swell UK, Aquacadabra, VioVet, and Pets Corner, with options in 50ml, 100ml, and 250ml sizes, providing live bacteria to quickly establish biological filtration and safely introduce fish to new tanks."

This will help with the cycle. However, you are correct that your plants will use Ammonium (NH$() and Nitrate. When plants are doing some or most of the cycling chores, you will still have some amount of bacteria in the tank and they want the Ammonia (NH3). Now matter hpw many plants are in a tank there will still be some amount of nitrifying bacteria, even if that is minimal. However, one can have a tank with no plants where the bacteria handle all of the cycling chores.

The biggest problem with using shrimp or flake for fishless cycling is that you have no control over the level of ammonia. So you also have no idea about nitrite or nitrate either. And then if you add live plants to the equation it gets even harder to assess or to control.

 

[Gertrudae]

To keep it simple ... be patient.
When I can't use mud from a mature tank I add som live food like black worm, tubifex, daphnia and snails to the aquarium. It helps the biology and ist interesting to watch.

 

[Deleted member 155206]

Hey all new to the forums, my Name is Paul and I live in the Stafford area

Ive had a couple of tanks in the past, I have a 125L now which I set up 10 days ago, the tank has live plants atm and a substrate plus some rocks and couple bits of wood. I'm using a Fluval 207 Cannister,

Since setting up the tank ive been using Stability and adding small amounts of fish food to get the ammonia going.

My PH in Stafford is high at around 8.2/8.4 and as I've used RO water in the passed and so I did yesterday add 25l of RO To bring my PH down a tad (Minerals added to the RO)

My tank over the last 3 or 4 days has been showing between 0.50ppm of ammonia and is maybe at 0.30ppm of ammonia right now.

Nitrite stays at 0 while Nitrates were at 5.0ppm 2 days ago 3.0ppm yesterday but as of today are pretty much zero or trace amounts.

The question is, is my tank still mid cycle with the plants maybe consuming the Nitrates and the ammonia just going down slowly cos im still very early in my set up?

Any feedback would be great.

Thanks Paul

Hi there been reading ur post I would stock your tank with Java fern and Amazon sword plants natural the better they been noted for ph lowering