Starting Cycle

[jon_h]

Hi All,

Yes i know cycling questions happen all the time but i got some household nia from homebase, i left my brother in charge of adding the nia to the tank seeing as he is older than me.
Ammonia goes into the water and goes cloudy like its supposed to but when i tested the water it was off the chart about 8ppm instead of being on 5-6ppm like suggested in the fishless cycling thread.
Will this make a large difference to the tank or will it just take slightly longer.

Also can i use silver sand as a substrate or do i have to use play sand or aquatic sand?

Thanks Jon.

 

[mark.w.jones]

1. You've added too much. You really need to remove water to reduce it to 5ppm. Otherwise your cycle could stall. Also is 8ppm the highest reading on your ammonia test kit? As it could be much higher than this.

Are you using a liquid test kit? If not you should be as they are far more accurate than paper strips.

Once youve reduced your ammonia to 5ppm test for it daily. As soon as it drops to zero you need to add ammonia again to raise it to 5ppm. Be careful when you do this as adding just a few drops to many can send ammonia off the scale. Id be tempted to add a few drops and test for ammonia. Then keep repeating this until you reach 5ppm. Keep count of the number of drops you added. Then next time it drops to zero you can obviously just add all your drops at once.

2. Silver sand is fine although probably more expensive than playsand depending on how much you need.