Newbie Trying A Fishless Cycle - Help?

[mjmTX]

Hi, all! I have three established tanks with bettas and 1 ADF: 3.5g, 5g, and 10g. With all three of these, I did fish-in cycling with the bettas. Everyone did beautifully and their tanks are all sparkling clean now. I live in a small apartment and can only have tanks smaller than 20g, so I wanted to get my feet wet (so to speak) with the aquarium hobby before trying anything harder than bettas.

I snagged a 16g bowfront aquarium kit for cheap at Petco during the post-Christmas sale. I set it up a few days ago with plans to do my first fishless cycle, chosen because the size of the tank makes frequent water changes a hassle. My tap water is high in ammonia, forcing me to schlep big jugs of RO water from my LFS to do water changes in my little tanks; I didn't want to be lugging these jugs to my apartment constantly, so I decided to set it up fish-free and cycle it properly.

I filled the tank with my tap water, which reads .5 on the API ammonia test, and treated the water with Prime. I got the heater and filter running and let it go for a few hours until the tank was at 78 degrees. Then--here is where I may have done something dumb--on advice from my LFS, I added a bottle of ATM Colony. I hadn't ever expected to use one of those "instant cycle" products, but the guy at my LFS talked it up so much, and he's generally really knowledgable, so I figured, what the heck.

Day 1, my ammonia was 0.50. Yesterday, I noticed the water was cloudy. My subsequent readings for the past two days have been as follows:

Day 2: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6
Day 3: Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Ph 7.6

So, no change in numbers besides the ammonia dropping from Day 1.

Here is my question: did the Colony work? Or have I basically just not even begun the cycling process yet? Should I do a PWC and start stocking? Or should I add ammonia to 5ppm and begin the waiting-and-testing process? I'm very new at this, and even with as much reading as I've done, I'm confused. And I kind of wish I hadn't messed with the Colony stuff, and just done a real cycle from the start.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The process is ammonia oxidizing bacteria use the ammonia and produce nitrite. This means there are two ways to know if you have begun to establish the ammonia oxidizers- ammonia levels go down and nitrite levels go up. My bet is you are getting false readings.

Q: I am using Prime® to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?

A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime®... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime&reg. A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime&reg, so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away.

from http/www.seachem.c...FAQs/Prime.html


As for ATM Colony-

Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria, which are specific for the freshwater environment.

From http/acrylictankma...ogicals/colony/

They do not indicate which strain of Nitrosomaa bacteria are in the bottle.

Enrichments containing the Nitrosomonas marina-like AOB strain were most efficient at accelerating ammonia oxidation in newly established aquaria. Furthermore, if the Nitrosomonas marina-like AOB strain was present in the original enrichment, even one with other AOB, only the Nitrosomonas marina-like AOB strain was present in aquaria after nitrification was established.

From http/aem.asm.org/c...67/12/5791.full

And for sure Nitrobacter is the wrong nitrite oxidizer.

Oxidation of nitrite to nitrate in aquaria is typically attributed to bacteria belonging to the genus Nitrobacter which are members of the alpha subdivision of theProteobacteria. In order to identify bacteria responsible for nitrite-oxidation in aquaria, clone libraries of rRNA genes were developed from biofilms of several freshwater aquaria. Analysis of the rDNA libraries, along with results from denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) on frequently sampled biofilms, indicated the presence of a putative nitrite-oxidizing bacteria closely related to the genus Nitrospira...................
Aquaria which received a commercial preparation containing Nitrobacter species did not show evidence of Nitrobacter growth and development but did develop substantial populations of Nitrospira-like species. Time series analysis of rDNA phylotypes on aquaria biofilms by DGGE, combined with nitrite and nitrate analysis, showed a correspondence between the appearance ofNitrospira-like bacterial ribosomal DNA, and the initiation of nitrite oxidation. In total, the data suggest that Nitrobacter winogradskyi and close relatives were not the dominant nitrite-oxidizing bacteria in freshwater aquaria. Instead, nitrite oxidation in freshwater aquaria appeared to be mediated by bacteria closely related to Nitrospira moscoviensis and Nitrospira marina.

From http/aem.asm.org/c...t/64/1/258.full

 

[mjmTX]

Okay, so... what does all of that mean? Should I just pretend like I didn't put the Colony in, and start dosing with ammonia to begin fishless cycling?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

If you can get a hold of some media or other hard contents from somebody's cycled tank, this would give you a jump start. The next choices would be either tetra's Safe Start or DrTim's One and Only- both contain the live bacteria you want. Otherwise just continue doing it as a fishless. Tha can not hurt anything.

 

[daizeUK]

Sorry to hijack but Amin you seem good at finding information... do you know if Interpet Filter Start uses the right species of bacteria? I looked around and even asked them directly but they're studiously ignoring me....

mjmTX - Normally in a fishless cycle you would add a bit more ammonia, up to about 4-5ppm. Either way, I wouldn't worry about seeing results after 3 days. I'm on day 30 of my cycle and still waiting for colonies to establish, other people see results almost straight away but it varies from person to person.

 

[Shaddex]

I have three established tanks

Silly question, but why dont you take some filter media from an established tank and use that to seed your new tanks filter ?

 

[mjmTX]

I did squeezings from the established filter, but I didn't want to move any gravel because the color/design is completely different in each tank and I didn't want to be faced with removing it later.

I decided I'm going to just proceed as though I hadn't used the Colony, and start feeding the tank ammonia. I have pure ammonia ordered, and until it arrives, I put a pinch of fish food in the tank to try to feed any bacteria that may be there.

Interestingly, the cloudiness has cleared up and the water is crystal clear again. I'm not sure what happened there.

 

[the_lock_man]

You can safely remove up to a third of an existing filter's sponges/ceramics, so long as you replace it with new sponges/ceramics. You can then use that matured sponge/ceramic in the new filter to kick-start the cycle. No point moving the gravel, as the bacteria don't live there in significant numbers (unless you have an undergravel filter). THe squeezings may have donated a bacteria or two, but not enough to really get things moving.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

As far as I know Dr Hovanec and Tetra (as successor to Marineland labs when it was acquired by Mars) how patent rights to some of the bacteria. This means that other manufacturers can only produce it under liecense. My experience has been that while many companies offer a bacterial starter product, almost none of them are willing to identify the specific bacteria they use. Once they identified what exactly in the bottle, this would allow anybody to research those bacteria to determine if they are the ones one wants. Its interesting to note that for SeaChem Stability, for example, they play up the non-nitrifiers and it is only with effort that one can discover there are no live autotrophic nitrifying bacteria, only spores for heterothophic ones.

I tried to find out what was in Filter Start without success.

But here is the thing. Even if one starts with the wrong sort of bacteria, it you filled your tank with tap water or used anything taken from an established tank, you are going to end up with a cycled tank anyway.

 

[daizeUK]

Interesting. I addressed a question to API today and it was answered by a consultant at Mars Fishcare, so it sounds like they're all really the same people lol

I did suspect that Interpet wouldn't give me an answer, they're all so secretive. I only ask because I got a bottle free with the tank, I've no intention of buying a bottle of anything if they don't disclose the contents.

So it sounds like Seachem Stability is completely and utterly useless then?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I did squeezings from the established filter, but I didn't want to move any gravel because the color/design is completely different in each tank and I didn't want to be faced with removing it later.

I decided I'm going to just proceed as though I hadn't used the Colony, and start feeding the tank ammonia. I have pure ammonia ordered, and until it arrives, I put a pinch of fish food in the tank to try to feed any bacteria that may be there.

Interestingly, the cloudiness has cleared up and the water is crystal clear again. I'm not sure what happened there.

The cloudiness was a bacterial bloom. Its normal, and clears generally on its own during a fishless cycle. The fish food was the correct method to build up some ammonia while you wait for the pure stuff to arrive. It is tougher to get an exact concentration, but it will offer ammonia to start the cycling process, even if it takes a little while.


What filters are you running on your established tanks? Just adding a bit of media to the filter of the new tank can dramatically cut down the time of the cycle. Even if you have an undergravel filter and don't want the gravel in the new tank, you can still add the new gravel to the new filter in the back, and you'll get a boost from that as well.

So it sounds like Seachem Stability is completely and utterly useless then?

I believe that's the consensus of the forum. Personally, any product that suggests it needs to be added any time you do a water change (other than a dechlorinating product) is just "snake oil" to me. I've never heard of anything that needs to be added during a water change.