Fishless Cycling Advice

Hi,

I've taken the plunge and gotten my 1st tank, 125L, moderately planted with rock and driftwood. I've opted for a fishless cycle and I'm using fish flakes as my ammonia source. I've been adding a few pinches each day (unsure on how much I should or should not be using) and I've also used fluval biological enhancer to give myself a kick-start. Water isI've put a picture of my current water parameters (I'm now 7 days into the cycle) and I guess I'm after reassurance I'm on the right track, and if I've done or doing anything to delay the cycling process.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance

The fish flakes are generating ammonia, and that is good. But you do not have a conversion of ammonia into nitrite despite the Fluval bio enhancer product. The conversion should begin soon. I prefer Tetra Safe Start over the fluval product. It works rapidly.

Perfect thanks for your reply. You know what it like starting out new, never sure if your doing it right or wrong!

Your ammonia is on an upward curve. Soon (hopefully) the nitrite will do the same. Look out for a nitrite peak followed by a nitrite crash to zero. At that point, your ammonia should also be zero and you'll be cycled. You will probably have a pretty high nitrate level by then, so will need to dilute the nitrate with a water change before adding fish..

Once the tank is cycled I would stock it slowly, one species at a time. There may be enough bacteria for a tankful of fish or there may not. Better to stock slowly than to risk ending up doing a fish-in cycle.
After you add the first fish, test for ammonia and nitrite every day. If they remain at zero, good. If they don't, you'll need to to daily water changes until they do. Once the levels have been zero for at least a week, you can add the next species, again testing every day afterwards.


One advantage of using ammonia from a bottle to cycle is that you know exactly how much has gone into the tank so you know when the cycle has finished that the tank has more than enough bacteria. With food, there's no way to know how much ammonia it has added, or how many bacteria have grown.

Thanks for all the help and advice, appreciated

Little update, after 11 days of fishless Cycling, my Nitrite has gone up which is good news!

I've attached a photo of what my parameters are currently. Should I still be adding my ammonia source (used fish flakes throughout) or should I just let it do its own thing now?

Any advice would be appreciated

Unfortunately you can't set much store by nitrate. The tester turns nitrate into nitrite and measures nitrite. If there's already nitrite in the water it measures that as well so the nitrate reading includes the nitrite reading.

When cycling with a bottle of ammonia, the tank is cycled when you add 3 ppm ammonia and the bacteria can process it to zero ammonia and zero nitrite in 24 hours. During the cycle, more ammonia is added when certain targets have been reached.
Your ammonia is zero but from the photo it appears that nitrite is below 2 ppm. That suggests that either the food hasn't made enough ammonia to be turned into over 2 ppm nitrite or maybe that you have grown nitrite eaters and they are keeping the level low.

I think I would add some more food and measure both ammonia and nitrite in a couple of days (that allows time for the food to produce ammonia). Let us know what the readings are then we can suggest what to do next.

Did you look at my 1st post or my recent one? As ih my recent post the Nitrite is between 1.5 and 2ppm Nitrite? And ammonia is in a similar range.

I was looking at the photo in post #7 - and I somehow read ammonia as zero when it's really 0.5 or 1.0. Oops, sorry about that my only excuse is that was I was being nagged about lunch.....


So both ammonia and nitrite above zero; wait until ammonia falls to zero and see what the nitrite reading is when that happens.

No worries the colours play with your eye sometimes thank you for the help

Using shrimp or fish food​

One of the more popular fishless cycling methods is to buy a few dead shrimp at the grocery store, cut them up into chunks and add them to the aquarium. The shrimp decay, which produces ammonia to feed the nitrifying bacteria. There are a few drawbacks with this method, one being that the hobbyist really has no way to know how much ammonia is being produced by the decaying shrimp, and the aquarium does not look very good with dead shrimp laying on the bottom. Also, the organic material of the shrimp can cause bacteria blooms which turn the aquarium water cloudy. This method works but it takes time and patience and you will probably see a spike in ammonia and nitrite if you add a medium to heavy load of fish after the initial cycling. Note that some people use flake fish food instead of shrimp but this is not recommended because flake food does not have much organic material compared to shrimp and so does not add a lot of ammonia to the water, but you can use cut fish instead of shrimp.

Click to expand...

from https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/fishless-cycling/

"The President of DrTim’s Aquatics is Dr. Timothy A. Hovanec who, for 17 years, was the Chief Science Officer of Aquaria Inc., the parent company of Marineland Aquarium Products, Aquarium Systems (Instant Ocean) and Perfecto Manufacturing.

Dr. Hovanec’s groundbreaking research on nitrifying bacteria led to him discovering and developing BioSpira® and then DrTim’s Aquatics One & Only Live Nitrifying Bacteria.

Dr. Hovanec earned his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he investigated the phylogenetics of nitrifying bacteria in aquaria and Mono Lake, California. Dr. Hovanec was the first to demonstrate that bacteria of the phylum Nitrospira were the active nitrite-oxidizing bacteria in aquatic systems such as aquaria. His work on nitrifying bacteria has led to the discovery of many new species of nitrifying bacteria in freshwater and saltwater systems and the granting of several U.S. and foreign patents, with additional patents pending. He has also conducted much research on topics such as ammonia excretion and toxicity in aquatic organisms, bio-filtration systems design and fish feed formulations."

from https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/about-dr-tim/

I'm 12 days into the cycle now, something is definitely happening in my tank, nitrites and nitrates both spiked. Should I just be leaving it alone now? Or should I do a water change?

Your ammonia now looks the yellow of zero, so I would add more flakes.

Or even better buy some ammonia and use that. Both Amazon and eBay sell Dr Tim's ammonium chloride for fishless cycling.

Your nitrate readings are tempered by the nitrite level (the nitrate test is also including nitrite) but if you subtract Nitrite from Nitrate it will give you a hint, if nitrate are already starting to build.

In the case that nitrate is building.

If your nitrite are not off chart. I would raise the ammonia to 4 ppm.

If nitrite is really high, I would wait another day or two or...

The ammonia oxidizing colony wont recess that fast in absence of food for a while, once alive they need oxygen above all to remain healthy.