My First Fishy Adventure!

[Stureid]

your ammonia will be about £2 a bottle. for your tank of 200 litres you will dose about 9mls of ammonia to get it to 4ppm. give or take

Thanks for working it out

Do you know how much CO2 I should be using?

Thanks

 

[balajake]

your ammonia will be about £2 a bottle. for your tank of 200 litres you will dose about 9mls of ammonia to get it to 4ppm. give or take

Thanks for working it out

Do you know how much CO2 I should be using?

Thanks

i have absolutely no understanding of CO2 units sorry. you could ask on the planted chit chat board that is lower down the forum

 

[Zikofski]

very nice tank any idea on what your going to put in it once its finished cycling

 

[Stureid]

Thanks

For stock I'm going south American with: some type of tetras, corys, pleco, angels and aspitogrammas hopefully. Going to start with the tetras I think, as soon as I work out how many to have!!!

 

[OldMan47]

Check your pH before you start the CO2 and check again after an hour or so of operation. If it has changed by more than about 0.5, you are using too much CO2. Be very aware that any CO2 bubbles that reach the surface are wasting part of the gas so it is hard to say how fast you will use up the gas, bubbles per minute rate. Ideally you would use a CO2 drop checker but it sounds like you have not gone that route. A pH measurement is a poor second but can give you some idea.

 

[Stureid]

Check your pH before you start the CO2 and check again after an hour or so of operation. If it has changed by more than about 0.5, you are using too much CO2. Be very aware that any CO2 bubbles that reach the surface are wasting part of the gas so it is hard to say how fast you will use up the gas, bubbles per minute rate. Ideally you would use a CO2 drop checker but it sounds like you have not gone that route. A pH measurement is a poor second but can give you some idea.

I am going down the route of a drop checker, no second rate rubbish for my fish!!!

Another update:

15/03/12 --- Dosed with 4ppm of Ammonia
16/03/12 --- Ammonia 4ppm
17/03/12 --- Ammonia 2ppm, Nitrite 2ppm. Looking good


Just waiting for ammonia to drop to 0 to re-dose.

I have also added some Riccia fluitans to my drift wood, picture to come

I've got some snails appearing in the tank too!! I've kept a close eye on them and they're just eating algae off the plants so i've left them for now.

 

[Stureid]

18/03/12 --- Ammonia 0.25, Nitrite 5

Pretty sure ill be ready for another dose of Ammonia tonight after testing

 

[Stureid]

Another update:

19/03/12 Ammonia 0!!
Nitrite 5
Nitrate 10

Re-dosed with Ammonia ready to check in 24hrs

 

[OldMan47]

I would have called your nitrites off scale and the nitrates around 20 ppm but you are making progress no matter how you read the tests.

 

[Stureid]

Thanks!

20/03/12 --- Ammonia 4ppm

 

[Stureid]

21/03/12 --- Ammonia 0
Nitrites 5+

Redosed with ammonia

 

[Stureid]

22/03/12 --- Ammonia 0 (took roughly 15hrs)
Nitrites 5+

Redosed with Ammonia

 

[Stureid]

23/03/12 --- Ammonia 0 (15hrs)
Nitrites 5+

Redosed

 

[Stureid]

It's an exciting morning!!!


Ammonia 0
Nitrite ---------- 0.25! Yay!!!!
Nitrate 80

It's alive, IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!

Redosed

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, now with your re-dose you may be able to begin to get an idea of the "rhythm" of the fishless cycling process that's going on with your bacteria. Will the bacteria be able to drop the 4-5ppm of ammonia down to zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite within 24 hours or perhaps even 12 hours? That will be the question beginning to form in your mind. You want to watch that process get more solid. As a bigger and bigger set of colonies build their biofilms in the filter, the filter as a system will get more and more powerful and able to quickly dispense with the chemicals that are dangerous to your fish.

These short weeks when you are fishless cycling may be the only period you have with your tank and test kit where you get to learn the real feel of building working, living, biofilter. It's a very valuable lesson because later things just roll along without that kind of feedback and learning and then if you eventually ever had to do it again or describe it to others it can be hard to remember what it really feels like.

~~waterdrop~~