What do they mean??

[Paul_MTS]

My 850l tank has been filled and filtering for 1 week from 6pm today (5pm at the moment).

The bio media had been in a heated tub with airstones before with waste from another tank in it.

The other day I added the old water from a tank which i had cleaned the sponges in, poured it straight down the sump plumbing!!

2 nights ago my parents turned the pumps off for several hours as something in the house trupping the fuses all the time and my tank was on the suspect list! so the media in the sump was still wet and submerged but not being circulated.

Tested the water today and i have 0 ammonia 0.3 mg/l of nitrite and 5mg/l nitrates.

Oh and i added 120ml of Stress Zyme over the weekend.

 

[karrihug]

sounds like you are almost there. you are adding ammonia daily right? if so keep it up and a couple more days should do the trick.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Apart from the waste added from other tanks I'm adding no ammonia, I might drop a a load of food into the sump tonight, that should make a nice load of ammonia!!

 

[StarOrbs]

Heh, I'm waiting on my tank too except I had one spike of nitrite at .25PPM and I haven't have any nitrite since. I've only been doing it 8 days so I guess I got a little way to go.

 

[CFC]

Without adding the ammonia you havent been doing anything, without a food source bacteria die off within a few hours. You will have to start the cycle again from scratch if you intend to do a fishless cycle or do a cycle with fish, personally i would add 20 or so small fish like danios or livebearers to cycle the tank and then leave them in there after as feeders/dithers. Fishless cycling doesnt really work as well on tanks over 100g because of the ammount of ammonia needed to get it going.

 

[technium]

Without adding the ammonia you havent been doing anything, without a food source bacteria die off within a few hours. You will have to start the cycle again from scratch if you intend to do a fishless cycle or do a cycle with fish, personally i would add 20 or so small fish like danios or livebearers to cycle the tank and then leave them in there after as feeders/dithers. Fishless cycling doesnt really work as well on tanks over 100g because of the ammount of ammonia needed to get it going.

Im with CFC, the problem you will have is once you add the fish and they start producing the ammonia etc you will get massive Ammonia and Nitrite spikes while your filter tries to cope with the bioload as its not used to that much ammonia being produced.

I was going to do fishless and then decided against it but good luck.

I think im right but others will correct me, its best to add one or two fish at a time giving your filter media time to cope with the extra load so bear this in mind once cycled.

T

 

[AlexsDaddy]

Without adding the ammonia you havent been doing anything, without a food source bacteria die off within a few hours. You will have to start the cycle again from scratch if you intend to do a fishless cycle or do a cycle with fish, personally i would add 20 or so small fish like danios or livebearers to cycle the tank and then leave them in there after as feeders/dithers. Fishless cycling doesnt really work as well on tanks over 100g because of the ammount of ammonia needed to get it going.

Yea, but buying a lot of ammonia is easier than trying to figure out what to do with the fish you cycled with if it turns out that they are not compatible with the fish you want in there IMO.

 

[CFC]

The fish paul want will just eat the cycling fish, no problems there.

 

[technium]

Plus my lfs will allow me to use fish for cycling and then return them, as long as their healthy then they are fine, but then again I do use them and spend alot in their store but it certainly helped me to cycle my tanks and usually alot quicker aswell with fish in it.