My Fishless Cycle.

[paulbr1]

I have a rebuild to do in my 260l so I will "try to" aquire some clean Nitrite and log the progress.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Joinerlavin]

If I pick my fish up saturday morning, would I have to put the 4ppm of ammonia in on saturday aswell to keep the bacteria growing, or stop on friday and put fish in on saturday?

 

[waterdrop]

If I pick my fish up saturday morning, would I have to put the 4ppm of ammonia in on saturday aswell to keep the bacteria growing, or stop on friday and put fish in on saturday?

You could actually do your big water change friday night and then add fish Saturday, no problem. Just remember that if something goes wrong and you're not putting fish in there then you need to feed the bacteria with ammonia again and do a water change again. As long as the filter is running and providing oxygen, the bacteria will only die back at a small percentage per day the first day or two without ammonia, but then it would certainly get worse starting on about day 3 without ammonia for them. (If you lose power and have no oxygen flow to them then you can lose more significant numbers after about 5 hours, so there're things you do for that of course.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waterdrop]

Question -

Using the fishless Cycle we add ammonia to grow the friendly bac. that converts ammonia into Nitrite.

Once the results are good as in the ammonia conversion goes from 5ppm to 0ppm in 12 hours

We then carry on until "other" bacteria grows which then also clears/converts the Nitrate down to 0ppm in a 12 hour cycle.

My question is that if we can use ammonia to significantly grow the first bacteria do we have to wait for the "standard time" growth of the Nitrite converting bacteria or would it be possible to say add Nitrite in a given daily dose to have the same speedy effect

My mind does wander but I am intriged to find out whether this has been tried and if it was succsessful, or of course I am completely off track!!!!

That's actually a very interesting and unusual question and I don't believe I've ever seen it asked before here in the beginner's section. I'm not sure what would be a good clean source for nitrite(NO2) that could be used for fishless cycling or if it would have different safety considerations than ammonia, but its a very, very interesting idea.

If I were trying it I would probably dose the tank at a lower rate than the ammonia, like perhaps 2ppm or 3ppm of NO2 and just put it in at the beginning when we start doing ammonia. Then I'd watch it with tests just like we normally do and when the nitrite spike phase started to take off I'd stop adding NO2.

I have no idea whether this is something that could be safely sourced but its one of the few ideas I've heard the might theoretically compress a little of the cycling time.

You get the good student gold star for tonight as far as I'm concerned

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Joinerlavin]

ok so it was all goin well until I checked it last nite and ammonia was 0ppm, and checked it again this morning and the ammonia had somehow gone up to 0.50ppm without me adding any

And the nitrite is staying at around 0.50ppm - 0.25ppm in 24 hours instead of going down to 0ppm in about 24 hours.

The only things changed this week are, refiled sugar and water etc... in my nutrifin co2 maching, and put the temp up from 25 degrees to 27 degrees.



going the gym for a hour so wont be able to reply till i get back

 

[Miss Wiggle]

whats your pH sitting at now?

 

[Joinerlavin]

pH is about 6.4ish

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thats your problem then, do a water change to bring it back up, a low pH will stall a cycle

 

[Joinerlavin]

big water change or low?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

big, start with 50% then re-test pH and post it up here

 

[Joinerlavin]

doing it now.

 

[Joinerlavin]

just done a 80 percent water change, got carried away because the tank is only small and before you know it your at the bottom of the tank, going to wait till the water settles and test for everything in about 30 mins.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

ha ha no problem, 80% is fine at this moment.

 

[Joinerlavin]

ammonia = 0.25
nitrite = 0.25

nitrate = 10
PH = 7.2

 

[Miss Wiggle]

good, you should start to see movement again in the stats tomorrow or maybe the day after, keep an eye on the pH and do water changes to keep it above 7