Tropical_fish's Fishless Cycle - Complete

[Tropical_Fish]

I'm not sure either, which would be the best route!

From what I have read people warned about going over 8ppm ammonia as it stopped development. My double doses were on the smaller side and even if they were put in together would only add to less than 7ppm. I was only adding 2.5ml which would take it to 3.4ppm twice a day.

I'm now putting in enough to take it to 4ppm twice a day. The ammonia is processing in well under 12 hours down to zero.

Could do with a few more opinions, on my nitrite drop.


My way of thinking with the water change was to...

Switch off External Filter and close the aqua stop (leaving the water in the filter)
Remove as much water as possible from the tank.
Fill the tank back up with water (a couple of kettles full too to warm it up) and stir in plenty of aqua safe
Switch the External Filter back on
Wait an hour or so
Test the Nitrite Level - if it's still off the scale then repeat the water change otherwise dose up with ammonia

 

[waterdrop]

Oh no, you misunderstand me. I'm not wavering about the overall approach, just about whether to bother with water changing right now or a little later and either way is no big deal, you'll get cycled either way.. its just kind of musing about which way might help things go a little faster.

I'm not worried at all about your ammonia having gone too high. You've obviously got plenty of A-Bacs and your ammonia is dropping quickly and nicely. You were probably never in danger of growing any of the 8ppm species of A-Bacs. Its the Nitrites and Nitrates I'm thinking about. Each 1ppm of ammonia gets processed into 2.7ppm of nitrite(NO2) and when you put 5ppm of ammonia in every 12 hours you're just mulitplying a lot of nitrite (and eventually, nitrate!)

You probably don't need to make the water change process so hard. If the intake tube of your external filter goes pretty far down, close to the substrate for instance, then often you can just "cheat" and leave the filter going. That's what I do. As I'm siphoning out water the noise of the waterfall from the spraybar just gets louder and louder, lol. Of course, you take care that you stop siphoning out before any air could get into the intake tube!

Then, yes, when you refill you can just dose conditioner directly into the tank water prior to adding tap water to the tank and doing it at a 1.5x amount is just an extra little precaution for those precious bacteria, in case the water authority happened to get heavy-handed with the chloramines or something, like they sometimes do. And later, by doing a second water change one hour or some hours later, that will often take care of some of the more concentrated nitrates that managed to hang out in the external filter while you were doing the first water change. Getting the high levels of nitrate out is just one of the tweaks that we think helps the N-Bacs grow faster, so that's why we do it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Levels all the same again tonight at 9.00pm, dosed with 3ml of ammonia again.

I think I'll leave it going for the minute and monitor the nitrite levels until I see a drop. If I get some spare time at the weekend I may do a change as I can't see it doing any harm


Is there any advantage to leaving the filter going during the water change? It's so easy to stop and restart that I don't see the advantage to leaving it running. Stopping the filter would also protect the filter media from untreated tap water whilst it mixes in with the dechlorinator? - Just my way of thinking!

 

[waterdrop]

Sounds good. No, no advantage, fine to turn it off, perhaps even safer for the pump, just saves me from leaning over and pulling the plug, lol.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Right looks like I'm starting to get somewhere,

Missed this mornings test after 12 hours, but tonight (24 hours since adding the last dose of ammonia) The Nitrite Test is coming back to readable results.

Every test I've done for the last week or so the drops have turned purple as soon as they hit the bottom indicating that it was off the scale, this time they didn't - having shaken it I can see it's not down to zero yet - it's a purple colour but doesn't really match the colours on the chart - so maybe it's just off the chart - but a change is better than nothing!

So:

Ammonia: 0ppm

Nitrite: Not sure but not turning purple straight away

Nitrate: 160+ppm

pH - not tested

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Day 19 - 9.00am test 31/07/2009

Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - Same as last night - looking at it in the daylight it's possibly 5ppm

 

[Tropical_Fish]

9.00pm test - 31/07/2009

Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 0ppm
Nitrate - 160+ ppm
pH - 7.5ish

dosed with 3ml of ammonia

So the ammonia is processing in less than 12 hours and the nitrite is processing in less than 24 hours

So it looks like it's nearly there now - will check again in the morning.



Once I do get to both processing in 12 hours how long should I leave it before the full water change? and how long before I add fish

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Just been re-reading the beginners section which suggests that I can add fish straight away when the tank is cycling in 12 hours. It also says I can fully stock the tank straight away - is that right? I'd prefer to just put 4 or 5 fish in to start.

Also I read that it says the tank will probably be full of brown algae and cloudy water - my tank has crystal clear water and no sign of algae - is that OK? It is well over filtered so that probably helps.

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Day 20 - 01/08/2009 - 9.00am


Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrite - 1ppm (I think it's purple defo not light blue)


So it's not quite doing the nitrite in 12 hours yet.

If I'm about later I might do an early test to see if it's processed in say 18 hours,

 

[OldMan47]

Once you have done a week of proving that your cycle is done, you can theoretically stock fully. I like to resist the temptation and start at about 50% or a bit more then ease the stocking levels up.

 

[Tropical_Fish]

I've just tested the Nitrite at 17:00 and it's at zero so it's processing the nitrite at somewhere between 12 and 20 hours.

So currently my tank is sitting with no ammonia and no nitrite and lots of nitrate - and my next dosage time is 9.00pm tonight. Could I bring that forward, seeing as there is no ammonia or nitrate or is best to always dose at the same time?


Seems pointless doing any tests at 9.00pm as I know what all the results are.

 

[sjolliff]

I heard people put a bit of fish food in to keep it ticking over till the time

 

[Tropical_Fish]

I heard people put a bit of fish food in to keep it ticking over till the time

Thanks but I think that would make the amount a bit hard to measure - I then wouldn't know how much to add to bring it up to 4ppm - don't want to end up with too much ammonia

 

[sjolliff]

iv just thought of that my self!,
i would of though they would be a trace of ammonia still, and a few hours wont do that much damage, plus there be alsorts in the filter its self,

IMO i would wait

 

[Tropical_Fish]

I wasn't worried about the bacteria dieing off yet, was more keen to keep things moving along!