# fishless cycle advise



## jenga (1 Sep 2010)

Greetings peeps.
Ive been cycling my 350 ltr tank for 20 days now, and nothing much has happened, as expected, but on Monday while talking to an old mate he said he kept cichlids and agreed to let me have ssome gunge from his filter. After water checks, we extracted about a quarter pint of thick brown soup from his filter sponges, this was then transfered to my filters.
tuesday am tests showed first real major ammonia drop, down to 2ppm, so I added ammonia to get levels back to 5ppm.

350ltr=350,000 divided bby 1,000,000 x 5 = 1.75 mlt ammonia, so I added 1.05 mlt to get back to 5ppm. 12 hours later checked again out of curiosity and level was 3ppm, so I gave it another boost.

Wednesday am...test showed 2ppm, adjusted back to 5ppm, 12 hours later 2ppm, adjusted again and checked 1 hour later, result... probably less than 4ppm.I have however never had a nitrite reading above zero. Is it possible that the gunge is active enough to change any nitrite to nitrate?

Will I still get a spike in nitrite?

Im in no hurry to add fish , just wondering best way to procceeed?

test kit is new and in date (liquid test, not dip strips)

your thoughts please, regards Roy


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## Tom (1 Sep 2010)

I would imagine your nitrite spike is yet to come. What kit are you using? If you are adding that much ammonia, you should definitely either be seeing a huge rise in NH3 (if bacteria are underdeveloped) or NO2. I would leave it to sit for a while without adding anything and just keep testing daily to observe the readings. If you don't see an NO2 or at least an NO3 reading something must be wrong. 

Tom


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## jenga (1 Sep 2010)

thanks for response, test kit is API master and is new and in date, Nitrate is off the scale, to my old eyes anyway.


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## Tom (1 Sep 2010)

If you have lots of Nitrate your cycle must be working. In that case I would then do maybe a water change to remove some of the NO3, and wait for the NH3 to disappear. If you are worried by the lack of NO2 you can see, take a water sample to a local fish shop and they should be able to test it for you. Once both the NH3 and NO2 show as zero on the chart, I would then do another water change to dilute the NO3 again and add fish. Or if you don't want fish, you could keep adding a tiny bit of ammonia to keep it ticking over.

Tom


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## dw1305 (2 Sep 2010)

Hi all,
If the tank is planted? and the plants are growing? if they are you can stop adding ammonia. I don't ever cycle my tanks, I just plant them and leave them and then once the plants are growing fairly well I stock them. I would always add a cycled sponge, but when we were doing the landfill leachate work in the lab. I mucked about with the ion selective electrodes (accurate measurement of ammonia, nitrate or nitrite is problematic even with the kit and standards made up) and did 4 day BOD measurement. The outcome was that planted systems (these will also have a microbial biological filtration capacity ) can potentially deal with huge BOD's, as long as enough oxygen is available. 

cheers Darrel


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## Radik (30 Oct 2010)

Hi All, 

I am new here and also currently cycling my tank with Ammonia. It is pain.. Ammonia is already turning to Nitrite. After I add ammonia to 1ppm it is consumed to 0ppm overnight but nitrites are way off chart. I did 50% water change yesterday did not help. I did 50% water change today little help still Nitrites are too high and Nitrates are not growing. I am cycling for around 3 weeks already and Nitrites are high for around 5 days and not turning to Nitrates.

Yesterday and today I collected lot of brown residue from gravel. Where is it coming from? I have no fishes.

So I did test mixed 50/50 today changed water with fresh new water only then and measured again and Nitrites were still around 2.5ppm. It is hard to read API test master has horrible scale for nitrites and hard to read.

I have aquarium planted although not heavily yet and of running canister filter. It is just 10g tank. PH is 7.6 I have TetraPlant substrate and 3mm gravel as topping. I am also using Prime as conditioner. Also adding easycarbo and profito and plants are growing especially Rotala Walichii like crazy.

I was reading that high Nitrites may prohibit turning to Nitrates. So should I keep doing water changes daily to get Nitrites to low or should I leave it and just pray for cycle to finish?


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