Hi all, Im new here, i will say hello and introduce myself in the new members bit, just want to get this post done first!

I have three fancy goldfish at the minute in their established tank, i bought them a nice new big tank though and read about and decided that i would do a fishless cycle. I want it all to be nice for them
So, first off, my new tank is a Juwel 180 Rio. I decided to feed that tank instead of using ammonia out of a bottle. One of the reasons for doing this is that my tank is at home and im at university in the week so my dad feeds the fish and the empty tank and then i come home and test the water and change the fishes water.

Ive been doing the fishless cycle for 17 days now and i know its going to take longer than this i just wanted to share my results so far and see if any of you guys could help enlighten me as to if its working or not!

As i said, i only test the water once a week as that when im home to do it so sorry that i dont have more results for you. i use APS testing kit

24th october
Ammonia- 0
NitrIte- 0
NitrAte- 5
PH- 7.6


27th october
Ammonia- 0.25
NitrIte- 0
NitrAte- 5


3rd November
Ammonia- 0.25
NitrIte- 0
NitrAte- Between 5 and 10


10th November
Ammonia-0
NitrIte- 0
NitrAte- between 5 and 10



So i really dont know whats going on! If any of you kind people could give me and advise or info about what you think is going on i wopuld be greatly appreciated! Is it showing signs of staring to cycle or what?!

Thank you for reading this monster of a post and if you need any futher info just ask.

You may wish to test for nitrates in your tap water. They could be coming from that....



And - Welcome to Koko's

Hi, thanks for your fast reply

Ive tested the tap water and i have

Ammonia- 0
NitrIte- 0
NitrAte- 5

so the NitrAtes are coming from my tap water. So whats going on with the cycling?? I know its early days but im really confused. Surely i should be seeing something :S

I prefer to feed ammonia instead of food. The food method didn't work for me. What is the temperature of your tank?

Its 22 degrees C/ 72 degrees F. I know that heat may speed it up and help it along but unfortunatly its pretty cold here at the min and im not in the position to use a heater. I would probably have used the ammonia method myself but im not here to do it and its nt fair on my dad to have to do it for me. Although im getting the feeling that the food method isnt working for me either

when you use ammonia, make sure you use a pure ammonia

Using food can often involve really careful management. Any rotting food needs to be vacumned up and the tank cleaned. It can be a fine balancing act between too little and too much food - and it needs to be constantly managed and monitored.

Using ammonia, actually, involves basically NOTHING. When you add the initial clear ammonia to the tank, it stays in the tank. It goes nowhere. The only thing that will happen is that the cycle will start. Your dad will not have to do anything at all during the week. On the weekends, you can test the tank and find out where the cycle is in its development. It will stay viable, working on your cycle for weeks with no intervention and no need to baby the tank. Your dad does nothing.

As you get to the end, you may have to have him dump in a prescribed amount of ammonia mid week, but you can premeasure it out in a little sealed cup and have him dump it in on Wednesday. It would only take him 10 seconds. That is not long.

Thank you for that very helpful post. I think i am going to have to try this method instead. Many thanks again

Hi again!

So i cleared out my tank, got rid of all the food in there and went out and got myself some pure ammonia. I read the article on here about fishless cycling, set my heater at 80 degrees and put in my ammonia, i put it in till i read between 3 and 4ppm. This was yesterday. Now today, i thought i would test it all again, and this is what im reading-

Ammonia- Around 3

NitrIte- 0.50

NitrAte- Between 5.0 and 10

I know i get the NitrAtes in my tap water, but i thought that it would take longer for the NitrItes to appear. Ive not put anything else in there except the water conditioner. Im a little confused.

Is this normal? have others fishless cycles started up this fast too?

Thanks again for any help you may offer.

There may have been some residual nitrite in there from your first attempt? Is there nitrite in your tap water? Are you using any other treatments or conditioners? How old is your test?

I emptyed all the water out from the first attempt and did a gravel vac. My test kit is around 3 weeks old. Im not using anything else in the water except my water conditioner. There is no NitrIte in my water.

I am also starting my first fishless cycle.
How critical is the amount of daily ammonia I add during the second part of the cycle ?
I am starting off with a 20 gallon tank for a couple of fish until I master the art of Water Chemistry,
before I move to anything larger,to avoid large scale disasters.
I am follwing the instruction on this website about fishless cycle,the writer says 3/10 cc on a daily
basis,I assume this is for a 50 gall tank, so I assume half ths amount will be OK..
If not please advise
Thank you
Infoseeker (UK)

This is a wonderful message board,it seems to cover all aspects from experts dealing with our problems..

Hi again guys!

I need to pick your brains again.

Im currently reading the tank as follows-
Ammonia- 0
NitrItes- 0
NitrAtes- between 40 and 80

Obviously im only testing the water at weekends as im not there in the week. Ive been getting my dad to put ammonia in the tank everyday as i did a test on the tank last week to find out that it was eating all the ammonia up after half a day or so.

Ive only seen the NitrItes appear once and that was last week, they read at 0.5.

Does this mean that the tank has almost cycled? Could the Nitrites have all happened in the week that i was away?

Should i keep adding the ammonia till my nitrAtes get higher?

Thank you for reading all of this! Also thanks for all the advise you have given so far, i really appreciate it

Sorry for the double post, i just want to bump it up so you can see it on the main page.

If you add a bit more ammonia and it disappears in a few days, you can probably conclude that you have an established nitrifying population. Don't worry about the nitrites, their appearance is normally brief, as the process of nitrite to nitrate conversion happens at a faster rate than ammonia to nitrite. That's why nitrites aren't normally present in significant concentrations.

I'm late in reading this thread, but my suggestion is to "seed" the tank with some gravel, fliter media, or whatever from an established tank. This will greatly speed up the process as the bacterial literally won't have to start from ground zero. By the way, when you use a fish to start the cycle, the bacterial "seed" can come from the fish.

I agree that it is best to use ammonia rather than food, since in a spanking new tank, you need to build up a population of what are called heterotrophic bacteria, which break organics down to ammonia.

Dennis

Thank you for your reply. Ive added some more ammonia and if that goes then im going to assume that its all done and do the big water change and put my babies in there.

Again, thank you to everyone that has replied and helped me out.