Newbie Help With Starting Cycle

[DanaLeChiffre]

Shalom,
I need to start a new cycle, because when I tried the first time things went wrong and the people on the other forum didn't help me, so i stopped the cycle.

I want to start a new cycle tonight or tomorrow night. I've just done an Ammonia test and the result is.... It looks about 8


What should I do? Water change or left it alone?

 

[rabbut]

8ppm is too much ammonia to start a fishless cycle with, believe it or not, the cycle can't start while it's that high. Is 8ppm the highest reading your test can take? If so, do a 100% waterchange and start a fresh with 4ppm of ammonia only If not, do a 50% waterchange and you're good to go.

All the best
Rabbut

 

[DanaLeChiffre]

100 % oh man !

That will take me 2 hours. What happens if I start a new cycle and the same happens again? the Ammonia doesn't go down?

 

[rabbut]

Are you using the add and wait method, or the add daily one? If add daily, I'd switch to the add and wait method. If you're on the add and wait method, just wait for it to go down before re-dosing. This assumes you are using liquid ammonia, not food e.t.c

 

[DanaLeChiffre]

Yeah It's liquid.

So all I have to do is wait for the Ammonia to go down and then just top it up to 4 again?

 

[rabbut]

Pretty much. Same with Nitrite. When Ammonia drops, Nitrite rises. Sooner or later Nitrite will fall also and Nitrate will rise. Once ammonia and nitrite have read zero for a week, 12 hours after you added the last lot of ammonia, you are cycled, ready for a large waterchange to bring nitrate down and add fish Whatch the pH if you are in a soft water area. Nitrite and Nitrate are acidic, and will crash the pH in a softwater area quite easily during a cycle This is easy to combat though, just add baking power or baking soda to the tank, 1 tablespoon per 10g

All the best
Rabbut

 

[DanaLeChiffre]

Ahhh ok.
Toda for all your help Rabbut

I'll wait and see what happens.

 

[waterdrop]

Or you could do some lesser percentage water change that would take less time but would probably get your ammonia level into a better range. The problem with ammonia being at 8ppm is that it encourages a different species of bacteria (different from the Nitrosomonas that we want) to win out and if that other species does win, then when the level of ammonia drops lower it will take a bit, but that wrong species will die and have to give up its spaces on the biosurface and then be replaced by Nitrosomonas. All this takes time and is a setback to your fishless cycle.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[DanaLeChiffre]

I replaced a couple of buckets of water and now the Ammonia is 4.

Some now I'll leave it and see what the ammonia does.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

you say that the cycle failed before, can you explain to us fully what's happened, it may be that we can spot something that was wrong and then avoid the same thing happening next time.

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, we get nervous when we don't know all the parameters and its not even our tank!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[DanaLeChiffre]

I've done a water change and the Ammonia it still 4-8.
Do I need to change all the water



Also.... some of my wood has, what looks like white fuzzy stuff grwing off it

 

[rabbut]

Depends how close to the 4ppm it is. If it's closer 8ppm, waterchange, arround 25-30%. If it's closer 4ppm, leave it