Yay!

[LionessN3cubs]

24 hour mark shows

0 ammonia
a big fat blue 0 nitrite


gonna leave it for 3 more days and see what turns up! Of course it WOULD finish while I was away and someone else was adding ammonia LOL

waterdrop?

 

[waterdrop]

Lioness, that's Wonderful!!

It was just waiting for Memorial day, right?

Isn't it fun seeing that clear yellow and clear sky blue both at the same time?

I hired the little girl next door to add ammonia to mine over the holiday and she did a great job - everything was just fine when I came back.

Oliver & I have been just basically in a holding pattern. I think we could have safely added fish quite a while back but we keep having busy weekends and not the time to do it right on adding fish. Like a lot of us here we seem to have a differential between our ammonia speed and our nitrite speed. 5ppm of ammonia is gone really fast but some nitrites still usually linger after 12 hours, always gone a few hours later but I've never figured out exactly how many hours because its usually late at night.

Really glad you found someone to add your ammonia!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[iankent]

Oliver & I have been just basically in a holding pattern. I think we could have safely added fish quite a while back but we keep having busy weekends and not the time to do it right on adding fish. Like a lot of us here we seem to have a differential between our ammonia speed and our nitrite speed. 5ppm of ammonia is gone really fast but some nitrites still usually linger after 12 hours, always gone a few hours later but I've never figured out exactly how many hours because its usually late at night.

Lioness - thats great news! Not much longer until the big day now!!

Waterdrop - you might have seen it already, but there's a discussion around this in the scientific thread - the extra time taken to clear the nitrites is probably because of the delay before nitrite bacteria appears (bacteria for nitrite starts growing later on in the cycle than bacteria for ammonia), and by the time you reach your target of clearing ammonia in 12 hours, there'll probably be quite a backlog of nitrites to clear

 

[backtotropical]

 

[LionessN3cubs]

tested this am at 8 am...roughly 17 hour mark and still had .25.
At 1 pm it was 0 so Im definately under the 24 hour mark and now just have to wait for the length of time to shorten to 12 hour right?

sucks that the little 2 gallon tank that was only bought like 3 weeks ago is cycled already. That only took like a week to cycle since I added some media from my 10 gallon. I mean Im glad its cycled ...just wish my big tank had cycled as fast as that LOL

 

[gaz gun man]

At 1 pm it was 0 so Im definately under the 24 hour mark and now just have to wait for the length of time to shorten to 12 hour right?

yeah, I remember when my levels were down within 24hrs

once they are down in 12 hours, I was adding enough ammonia to bring it back upto 4/5ppm every 24 hours, which would go within 10 or so hours.
I did that for a week to keep feeding the bacteria before I added fish.

 

[iankent]

tested this am at 8 am...roughly 17 hour mark and still had .25.
At 1 pm it was 0 so Im definately under the 24 hour mark and now just have to wait for the length of time to shorten to 12 hour right?

shouldn't be too much longer now!! another few days and (in theory) you'll be done another thing to consider is the inaccuracy of the tests that .25 your reading could actually be .01 or .5 after accounting for lighting differences, differences in the chemical/water ratio with each test, temperature differences, colour perception etc., so what seems like .25 after 12 hours today might end up being 0 after 12 hours tomorrow, even if there's only a tiny difference in the nitrites present!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

brilliant Lioness, can't believe I didn't spot this thread sooner!!

Have a read of the topic about when you're actually done cycling in the scientific section, may shed some light on things.

 

[waterdrop]

Oliver & I have been just basically in a holding pattern. I think we could have safely added fish quite a while back but we keep having busy weekends and not the time to do it right on adding fish. Like a lot of us here we seem to have a differential between our ammonia speed and our nitrite speed. 5ppm of ammonia is gone really fast but some nitrites still usually linger after 12 hours, always gone a few hours later but I've never figured out exactly how many hours because its usually late at night.

Lioness - thats great news! Not much longer until the big day now!!

Waterdrop - you might have seen it already, but there's a discussion around this in the scientific thread - the extra time taken to clear the nitrites is probably because of the delay before nitrite bacteria appears (bacteria for nitrite starts growing later on in the cycle than bacteria for ammonia), and by the time you reach your target of clearing ammonia in 12 hours, there'll probably be quite a backlog of nitrites to clear

Yes, thank you Ian, ironically, Lioness is one of the fishless cyclers who followed along with various approaches that BTT & I tried for working on the nitrite backlog back in March of this year, or sometime during her and my long fishless cycles!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[iankent]

Oliver & I have been just basically in a holding pattern. I think we could have safely added fish quite a while back but we keep having busy weekends and not the time to do it right on adding fish. Like a lot of us here we seem to have a differential between our ammonia speed and our nitrite speed. 5ppm of ammonia is gone really fast but some nitrites still usually linger after 12 hours, always gone a few hours later but I've never figured out exactly how many hours because its usually late at night.

Lioness - thats great news! Not much longer until the big day now!!

Waterdrop - you might have seen it already, but there's a discussion around this in the scientific thread - the extra time taken to clear the nitrites is probably because of the delay before nitrite bacteria appears (bacteria for nitrite starts growing later on in the cycle than bacteria for ammonia), and by the time you reach your target of clearing ammonia in 12 hours, there'll probably be quite a backlog of nitrites to clear

Yes, thank you Ian, ironically, Lioness is one of the fishless cyclers who followed along with various approaches that BTT & I tried for working on the nitrite backlog back in March of this year, or sometime during her and my long fishless cycles!

~~waterdrop~~

hi lioness i've been following your thread a little bit - it's hard to keep up with so many threads on the forums lol! talking of which, do you have all the water test results from your cycles that could be used? with a bit of luck and a lot of experiments hopefully we can find out why some cycles take this long!

just looked at your post in the scientific section again, and seeing as there's not much changing at the moment, it might be worth doing a large water change to clear everything out (all the bacteria are still in the filter), then add another 5ppm ammonia and see what happens over the next few days?

 

[LionessN3cubs]

12 testing mark today showsssssssssssss


0 ammonia
.25 nitrite woohooooooooo

SOOOOOOOO close!! After all this time, its painful to be this close


although actually, Im only at about 11 hours ..had to test early cuz we're going on a school picnic for my middle cub...wish I could be here in an hour to test but I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to check it out. :::sigh:::

 

[LionessN3cubs]

thats IT....I give up. Gonna do a big water change and stock this tank.

I tested at 12 hours today and have a full 1ppm of nitrite. Yesterday it was .25 at 11 hours. THis is ridiculous and Im out of patience.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

can understand your frustration Lioness, I hope it works out for you.

 

[waterdrop]

Several people have done this. They have reported Ammonia dropping in under 12 hours (often way under), but Nitrite still showing 0.25 - 1.0 or so after 12-14 hours (I believe) and yet they've done their big water change and stocked the tank. What reports there were from them seemed to say the fish were fine and they never saw any ammonia or nitrite showing up after that and felt like their tank was sufficiently cycled. I believe in every case people did not stock to the max.

I believe even some very experienced members reported stocking when nitrites (& maybe even ammonia, but I can't really remember this) were only showing as cleared in 24 hours, not 12 and they saying they had no visible problems.

Anyway, I'll bet you won't have any problems, but please report what you see on your tests -- we all know you're a good tester!

~~waterdrop~~
(I just haven't stocked mine because we haven't had time and I've been mucking with plants...)

 

[LionessN3cubs]

Im fricken confused is what I am to be honest.


like I said I tested at the 12 hour mark and had a full 1ppm, when yesterday at 11 hours I had .25. I double checked at 14 hours and Im down to .25.

Im still going to stock this weekend..as long as things stay "okay" the rest of the week because my patience really IS gone now.

lmfao I laughed so hard I almost peed myself yesterday tho. Tyson (my hubby) was talking about getting a house and putting a pond in and blah blah blah and I just HAD to speak up and say "but of course the pond will have to be cycled first yanno" ...the look he shot me ...hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha and then he says... " YOUR not TOUCHING my pond" lmfao died laughing I tell ya lmfa