My Fishless Cycle.

[Miss Wiggle]

basically, you can part fill with warm water from the kettle to get it up to temp quicker as well if you like.

 

[waterdrop]

'course you wouldn't want to pour boiling water into your internal filter

(just having fun) ~~waterdrop~~

 

[Joinerlavin]

ok thanks miss wiggle

 

[Miss Wiggle]

nah, part fill it with cold, chuck a kettle or two of warm water in depending on the size of the tank then fill teh rest with cold.

 

[Joinerlavin]

I will put it all in a bucket first and try and get it to 25 degree and then pour that in the tank over my wood so that my substate doesnt go everywhere.

 

[OldMan47]

That should work just fine JoinerLavin. Cold first followed by hot would also work fine. The bacteria may not row fast with cooler water but a short exposure won't hurt them either.

 

[Joinerlavin]

ok cheers,

Now I am at the point where the ammonia drops to 0ppm in 24 hours and the Nitrite keeps reading 5ppm, how long until The Nitrite starts to drop down?

 

[waterdrop]

Its very unpredictable how long it takes. The "nitrite spike" stage you're at can seem very boring because nitrite always seems the same top reading, but of course what's really going on is that nitrite is really very high, above what the test can measure and so probably it is slowly coming down via the N-Bacs eating it and then surging back up again as the A-Bacs convert another bunch of ammonia.

So to you it will look like all of a sudden when you start to see drops in the NO2 test results. Then it will be dropping each day and you'll be excited for a while but unfortunately then there is often (not always) another seemingly endless boring period where the NO2 drops each day but can't seem to do it in 12 hours, so you can't get to your "qualifying week."

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Joinerlavin]

whats a qualifying week lol, I think the "fishless cycle help thread" needs updating with all this terminology, to stop people like myself annoying you fine people with these questions.

Yea my Nitrite turns purple as soon as the drops hit the water in the test tube, "API Master Kit", but when I shake them they dont turn green, like it says in the help topic because the nitrites are too high? The tube stays dark purple.

 

[waterdrop]

The "turning blue-green" is just a rare thing, perhaps for very extreme levels. Most often you just see extremely dark purple when the API kit measures the nitrite spike.

Whoops, gotta run, more later...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waterdrop]

OK, I'm back (hey, at least my kids team won the basketball game )...

At the end of fishless cycling, there can be some frustration because the bacterial colonies are still a bit fragile and sometimes people decide the end has come, they do their big water change, get fish and whoops, there's still more ammonia and/or nitrite showing up suddenly.

The test that you've reached the end of fishless cycling is that you put in 5ppm ammonia and then, 12 hours or less later, you test again and find that both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero. So rather than just jumping right into the big water change the first time you see that, we've been getting in the habit of letting that be the start of a "qualifying week" and just continuing to add ammonia and watch it drop it within the 12 hours each time to be sure it is robust. The idea was just to do this for the rest of the days until it got you to the weekend when you had time to do the water change and buy your fish, ie. not more than a week.

The feedback from this seems positive, with some people reporting that once the "qualifying week" actually hit, they realized they needed to check if the LFS really had the fish they wanted and other last minute details, so they kind of needed it for last minute planning and also, of course, some have reported that they really did have a small setback and were glad they hadn't jumped too soon.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Wanted to ask (after seeing that job thread), What's a Joiner? We must not use the same word over here (or else I'm just ignorant, lol)

 

[Miss Wiggle]

A joiner is a carpenter/cabinet maker

 

[waterdrop]

o you're kidding - I really missed that one, I was thinking up things like the job where you join two sheetrocks together with tape and plaster or something... another year or two and you guys are going to have me brewing tea or something, lol.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well to be fair there's lots of things that you could be joining as a joiner so it's not that obvious.


well we can either go refined traditional british and we'll get you something like a nice ceylon with some scones and cream. Otherwise known as a cream tea.

Or we can explore the builder route some more and I'll get you a cup of builders tea with about 50 sugars in and strong enough to melt the spoon with a big portion of fish and chips.

 

[waterdrop]