Beginner to fish keeping: cycling questions

[ellamay]

Keep using the filter boost. If it works it will shorten the cycle.


You need to add ammonia or the bacteria in the filter boost won't multiply as they'll have no food. Look on Amazon or Ebay for ammonia - you may find Dr Tim's ammonium chloride and that works just as well (it's just that you can't use the calculator on here to work out how much to use, but the bottle should tell you that).
Once you have the ammonia and an ammonia tester, just follow these instructions

Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!

Cycling Your First Fresh Water Tank What is Cycling and Why is it Important? Fish waste, and especially fish breathing, plus uneaten food and other organic matter breaking down in a tank all produce Ammonia. This can quickly become toxic to fish if it is allowed to build up to any measurable...

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I notice that the filter boost instructions say to add some very month. That's just to make you keep buying it.

Thanks so much for your advice I feel a lot more confident in what I’m doing now. I’ll do what the filter boost says for the first week then I’ve got the ammonia arriving on Wednesday and I’ll start doing that and following the guide on here. Will the green water go away on its own?

 

[madmark285]

Shall I just treat it as day 1 of cycling when I add the ammonia?

I would stop thinking in terms of a schedule. What I did, raise the ammonia levels to 3-4 ppm then wait until it drops to near zero, added ammonia a second time, 3-4ppm, and waited until it drop to zero. I never saw any significant levels of nitrite which is expected. My nitrate level were low, around 5 ppm which was a little concerning as I expected higher levels. I scrubbed my DIY wood pieces in the tank which made a serious mess and did 2 major water changes (50%). I then added 6 tiger barbs and 6 serpae tetras.

I kind of screwed up on stocking the tank, I did it way too fast. I really wanted some Odessa barbs and PetCo had 10 of them so I bought them 10 days after I finished cycling the tank (75 gallons). To be safe, I been doing 20% water changes almost daily.

I also forgot to turn off the water and dumped ~20 gallon of water in the attic game room, where my tank is located. Luckily Mrs. Mad rarely comes up here and it did not damage the ceiling below. With a shop vac and fans, I got it dried out.

 

[Essjay]

The method on here tells you add ammonia only when certain targets have been reached. This is because if too much ammonia is added, so much nitrite is made that it stalls the cycle.
If the filter boost works, you may be lucky and not see any nitrite like madmark; but most people do see nitrite and you need to keep it low enough that it doesn't stall the cycle.

The idea behind fishless cycling is that it grows more bacteria than a sensibly stocked tank of fish need, and provided you don't go mad and overstock the tank you should be able to add all the fish once the cycle finishes. Following the method on here means that you should have all the bacteria you need at the end.

 

[ellamay]

I would stop thinking in terms of a schedule. What I did, raise the ammonia levels to 3-4 ppm then wait until it drops to near zero, added ammonia a second time, 3-4ppm, and waited until it drop to zero. I never saw any significant levels of nitrite which is expected. My nitrate level were low, around 5 ppm which was a little concerning as I expected higher levels. I scrubbed my DIY wood pieces in the tank which made a serious mess and did 2 major water changes (50%). I then added 6 tiger barbs and 6 serpae tetras.

I kind of screwed up on stocking the tank, I did it way too fast. I really wanted some Odessa barbs and PetCo had 10 of them so I bought them 10 days after I finished cycling the tank (75 gallons). To be safe, I been doing 20% water changes almost daily.

I also forgot to turn off the water and dumped ~20 gallon of water in the attic game room, where my tank is located. Luckily Mrs. Mad rarely comes up here and it did not damage the ceiling below. With a shop vac and fans, I got it dried out.

Thanks for the advice, I do feel quite stressed about messing it up. Think I need to just relax a bit! ?

 

[ellamay]

The method on here tells you add ammonia only when certain targets have been reached. This is because if too much ammonia is added, so much nitrite is made that it stalls the cycle.
If the filter boost works, you may be lucky and not see any nitrite like madmark; but most people do see nitrite and you need to keep it low enough that it doesn't stall the cycle.

The idea behind fishless cycling is that it grows more bacteria than a sensibly stocked tank of fish need, and provided you don't go mad and overstock the tank you should be able to add all the fish once the cycle finishes. Following the method on here means that you should have all the bacteria you need at the end.

That’s really helpful thank you my ammonia stuff comes on Wednesday so I’ll start with the method on here