Yet Another Tank Journal By Ch4Rlie!

Thanks Akasha and Ninj, wel, getting there surely.
 
On the 16th, 2 days ago, during my usual maintenance cleans of my main tank, I put in the tank a squeeze of half the filter media from main 3 foot tank in the hope it will seed my tank a little.
 
So now its official, I now have properly started my fishless cycle
 
The test results so far, 16th May, aded 0.05ml of my ammonia (its 35% strength in case you wonder why so little ammonia), whihc is just one drop in approx of 4 gals of water after deducting water isplacement of substrate, plants and decor.
 
Ammonia -  0 ppm , then added 0.05ml ammonia, now reads as approx 2ppm.
Nitrite -        0.25ppm
Nitrate -      80ppm (do bear in mind my tap water gives out about 30ppm nitrate so hardly surprsing its fairly high at this stage)
 
 
Today's result, 48 hours after first ammonia dose
 
Amm - 1.25 ppm
Nitrite - 1.5 ppm (actually over 1.5ppm but less than 2ppm, hard to tell exactly with the colour chart!!)
 
Already the ammonia bacs are at work and showing nitrite as a result
 
This is pretty much on course as expected, a good note to remember, 1ppm of ammonia converted to nitrite is about 2.7ppm nitrite. Using that, should mean that around 0.75ppm ammonia converts to, in theory, about 2 ppm nitrite (2.025 to be exact )
 
Now hopefully the nitrite will peak fairly quickly over the next few days and then the nitrite bacs will appear before too long (fingers crossed!)
 
Did not test for nitrate as no real point at this stage.
 
I am one of these strange folks who actually enjoys doing fishless cycles and seeing the results then working out if am on the right path.
Of course fishless cycling is enjoyable as long as it goes to plan, its when things start going wrong that its then stressful!

This is brilliant!! I've never seen anyone do anything like this before, good luck with the cycle!

fishmad135 said:

This is brilliant!! I've never seen anyone do anything like this before, good luck with the cycle!

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Thanks
 
Do you mean you've never seen a set up of a half moon tank against a standard 25 gal long tank? or do you mean you've never seen a journal?
 
Just wanting to check which is it
 
The cycle is progressing nicely btw. Ammonia is now sort of between 0.5 to 1ppm, and Nitrite is over 2.0 but just a tad under 5.9ppm according to colour chart anyway, its hard to tell exactly sometimes.
 
But anyway, as a guide, ithe cycle is on track, ammonia is now less and nitrite is rising, exactly what you want to see at this stage. Hopefully tomorrow it will be ready for a second dose of ammonia to continue the progress of the cycle.

Ch4rlie said:

 

This is brilliant!! I've never seen anyone do anything like this before, good luck with the cycle!

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Do you mean you've never seen a set up of a half moon tank against a standard 25 gal long tank? or do you mean you've never seen a journal?
 
Just wanting to check which is it

Click to expand...

 
 
Haha I meant the half-moon against the tank! Its a fab idea  

fishmad135 said:

Haha I meant the half-moon against the tank! Its a fab idea

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Yes, I think it works rather well having this sort of set up. It give me more options as what i can stock in the tank to give different factors, though of cours a 5gal tank does not give much options stocking wise, but always had shrimp set up in mind anyway so its win-win for me.
 
In actual fact, the idea came from looking at tanks such as this bullet tank, I have wanted one of these for quite some time but alas, space and money is sorely lacking to get one of these!
 


 
 
So with that tank shape in mind, i made the decision to find a half moon tank that fits the dimension of the side of that 3 foot tank best especially the height, and luckily found that one which was very near the mark I wanted and the rest, as they say, is history

                         
 
 
Cycle is finished!
 
                              Zero Ammonia and Zero Nitrite results !
                         
 
 
Always a good feeling when a successful cycle has been completed
 
 
 
10 days of cycling from start to finish from just a squeeze of gunk from half of my filter media from one of my established tanks. Does indeed make a difference seeding a tank this way compared to doing a cycle from scratch with just ammonia, thats usually up to 42 days, sometimes longer, depending on a few factors.
 
 
Will do a big water change either tomorrow or Saturday and then see if can catch these amano shrimps from my main tanks and pop them into this little tank.
 
 
Be nice to see some life in this little tank after this time and effort
 

Yay! Very exciting Hopefully they're not too hard to catch.

I applaud your effort Ch4, but I'd have cheated with a bit of mature filter media.

Would have been cycled in a day or two. Haha

Very true EA
 
I DID think about adding some media to the tank but due to this tank having a sponge filter, no easy way of adding media to the filter, though could have tied it around the sponge but would have been a ugly sight.
 
But i actually wanted to try this squeeze of filter media method again to compare to the last time i used this method, pretty much exactly the same amount of time, last time was 11 days on a 10 gallon tank at 3ppm doses.

I've done it the other way round before, added sponge media to an already cycled cannister to get the bacteria flowing
 
Then when I'm ready to start the tank I move the sponge over and there should be plenty of bacteria thriving to be able to start fairly rapidly.

Great stuff Charlie.that tank was meant for that area.

Seems am having a bit of an nitrate issue at the moment
 


 
The nitrate level was at one point around 160ppm, i was a little surprsied byt this as I did a big 85 - 90% water change only 48 hours before that test.
 
The reasons I did the nitrate test was the fact when i added the 3 amano shrimps into the tank they would not settle, kept going around the tank. At first thought was because of being in a new tank and should settle fairly quickly. 45 mins later, still haring around. Something's not right i thought.
 
The pic of the test result was what i saw, so immediately did a big water change, added floating plants and elodea from my main tank in the hope these may help a little with the nitrate.
 
Then did test on my tap water, its around the 40ppm mark, which to be honest is pretty normal for my tap water, usually 30 - 40ppm.
 
So the least i can lower the nitrate is 40ppm and usually the plants will counter the nitrate. In my two other tanks, nitrate is rarley ever over 5ppm by the end of the week.
 
Then am going to conduct a small test with my substrate and see if any answers from that.
 
The only things in the tank are the plants, substrate and bogwood, of course theres a filter and heater. Thats it.
 
I cant really fathom how nitrate can be so high, tested again yesterday, was around the 80ppm mark. Ugh!

could something be leeching from the wood? 

Test bottle still in date Charlie?