My Fishless Cycle Log

[Jabb3r]

Added the plants yu sent, Lookin like more of a fish tank now

Have noticed though. Where the silicon seal is on the 2 back edges. Theres cobweb like hairs commin off it. I rubbed it down with a flanal, but now it's all just floating around, some are fairly large cobwebby chunks. Any ideas what that could be?

Cheers
Jab

 

[waterdrop]

Those are probably harmless bacterial biofilms, or fungus that likes silicone. Lots of that happens in fishless cycling tanks and is harmless and will go away. By the way, only use your lights when you need to work in the tank.

You've been a week now, so log another pH reading. Try a tiny tweek of your heater knob (or get the second heater?) to get up to 29C if you can. Round off your temperature postings to the nearest C degree. If you don't want to do 12 hour tests at this point you don't need to. But do test and log once a day.

Moving toward phase 2 at 7 days is very lucky and fast.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Jabb3r]

Think I've cocked up and put too much Ammonia in. I put equiv of near 5 ppm again, but think I only needed to do equiv of 3 - 4 ppm. Hopefully it aint detrrimental and will just add a bit of time onto things?

 

[waterdrop]

5ppm is fine. It's up around 8ppm that we don't want to do for an extended time. WD

 

[Jabb3r]

I just did my water tests and it looks like the ammonia level is 0.25 - 0.50 ppm. Does that sound right?

The Nitrites have never gone green if left like it said on the guide I read. Am I doin summut wrong?

Edit:

Ok now I'm confused. After gettin the strange readin (to me anyway) on the Nitrites I decided to do the Nitrates for the Hell of it. The colour I got was a bronze/golden/orange but didn't seem to be covered on the chart.

So I waited an hr and did another. this time I got a very red colour. Not like the 160 ppm yu see on the API chart as thats goin towards a browny colour imo. This is more a deeper pure red. I'm not sure what this all means now.

Any advice?

Edit2:

I re read the testing instructions and did everythin to the letter. The Ammonia and Nitrite tests were the same, but the Nitrate went back to that golden colour I mentioned above so will call the last test a false result as now if I were gonna put this colour anywhere it'd be between 5.0 - 10.0 ppm.

 

[Mogs26]

Hiya-looking good in your cycle-I am 4 weeks into mine and waiting for nitrites to drop in 12 hours-at the 0.25 in 12 hours ATM, so I am only a noob at this! As I understand it, the levels should be raised to 4-5ppm, so you are ok being at 5ppm.
I used http/www.fishforums.net/aquarium-calculator.htm to calculate how much ammonia to add and going on your 90l, from that you would be adding 4.75 to raise to 5ppm which is what you added when you said it should be less. Verification needed from the experts here, but just a thought
Carole x

 

[waterdrop]

When dosing ammonia I don't put too much faith in either tool, the calculator OR my reading of the color from a liquid ammonia test. I hope that from paying some attention to both of them I'm staying safely well below the 8ppm that could cause problems. Unless I am at the very end of a fishless cycle, I rarely bother with trying to guess at 5ppm. In the first phase I feel that 3 or 4ppm is just as good as 5ppm. In the second phase (nitrite spike) I do feel it's useful to try and be down at 2 or 3ppm to limit the amount of nitrogen going in. But then its back up to 4ppm and then finally looking at the calculator and colors a little more at the end and hoping for a more accurate 5ppm.

The inaccuracy of judging colors is pretty obvious (it's helped by holding the tube on the white part of the card and having an incandescent spot-lamp between your eyes and the sample (don't use fluorescent in particular because it does weird things to greens.)) The inaccuracies of the calculator are less obvious: the ammonia percentage giving on an aqueous ammonia product is not capable of being terribly accurate because ammonia is a gas and will begin gassing off as soon as the product is opened. So of course we're all subject to a certain amount of a guessing game anyway.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Jabb3r]

Had a drop in Nitrites and increase in Nitrates so that makes sense

 

[waterdrop]

 

[Jabb3r]

How long is it before the bacteria starts to die off?

I had 0 Nitrites last night, but the Ammonia test was more green than yellow, but this mornin it's more a yellowy brown. If theres no Nitrites there should be no ammonia right? I'm gonna top it back upto 5 ppm later as that seems to be workin for me, but will it be ok to leave it till tonight or should I top up now?

 

[waterdrop]

As you've noticed in the threads, we like to "pulse" the ammonia dose, waiting a full 24 hours to re-dose even if we test at only 12 hours and find that the kit reads zero ppm. This means the bacteria are seeing perhaps only a trace of ammonia for the 2nd 12 hours of the 24 hour period. If we went out to about 48 hours with no dosing we might see a small (couple percent?) die-off, but that is pretty insignificant with respect to the growth of the colony which under natural conditions would see plenty of wild swings in ammonia supply.

Looking at your logs it appears your fishless cycle may be proceeding very rapidly. Did you add any mature media at any point? If not, it may be that your water supply just had higher than typical numbers of just the right species that we need!

The subtle change you are seeing in your ammonia processing may actually be an early indicator that the A-Bacs are reacting to the now highly elevated nitrate(NO3) that your nitrate test seems to be finding (80-160ppm.) It may be that this weekend would be a good time to perform a full water change, gravel cleaning down to the substrate and then recharge the tank with 5ppm of ammonia after the conditioned and temp-matched tap water has refilled the tank. It's time to be watching what's happening to the nitrite(NO2) at 12 hours after dosing. If this fishless cycle is under a month then we need to be very careful that we don't get faked into thinking it's fully cycled and then have a massive nitrite spike come back on us, as sometimes happens in these quick ones.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Jabb3r]

I've added no mature media of any kind. I added a few artificial plants tom sent me but thats it apart from the doses of ammonia. I'm away friday night, but back saturday night. I was gonna redose before tonight as I leave in the mornin. I can then test when I get back sunday and do a big waterchange sun/mon and re dose then if needs be. @ least I'll know I'll be feeding what bacteria I have if I re dose tonight while I'm away. I aint in any rush to get fish in there as I want to make sure it's properly cycled before I do. I am pleased with the way it's goin so far mind.

 

[Aqua Tom]

I've added no mature media of any kind. I added a few artificial plants tom sent me but thats it apart from the doses of ammonia. I'm away friday night, but back saturday night. I was gonna redose before tonight as I leave in the mornin. I can then test when I get back sunday and do a big waterchange sun/mon and re dose then if needs be. @ least I'll know I'll be feeding what bacteria I have if I re dose tonight while I'm away. I aint in any rush to get fish in there as I want to make sure it's properly cycled before I do. I am pleased with the way it's goin so far mind.

Those plants where in my first tank but have spent a month or so in a bucket on my patio so I dont hold much hope for bacteria to be on them.

How do they look in your tank?

 

[Jabb3r]

They look great. Will get a pic uploaded for you to see. The woods leechin again and those activated carbon things seem to do naff all for water clarity lol but never mind, might switch to an external filter sometime next year and use some charcoal filters/sponges or whatever they am lol

 

[Jabb3r]

Ok so I'm back, a day late (bloody weather) but back so now I'm gonna do me next test between 11 - 12 tonight so will see whats up in the tank. I had a thought about the 90% water change I'm gonna do. How can I bring that big of volume of water upto the same temp as in the tank?

Just thinkin of the logistics as last time I just used a hose to put it in straight from tap. smaller changes aint gonna be a prob, but a big one, not sure how it's done.