Cycle Help
- Thread starter mark4hay
- Start date
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Yes, you are getting great advice from Barry and Tom. Cleaning the other tank's filter in the new tank will give you a powerful boost. You still want to learn how to numerically cycle and "qualify" a biofilter, it just gives you are really solid understanding of this core aspect of the hobby. At some later point many of us have looked back and realized that it gave us more flexible knowledge useful in many filter related situations.
WD
WD
Aqua Tom
Fish Gatherer
Talking of ammonia I am running out lol.
Hello Mark,
If you take a look in Aqua Tom's signature you will see some helpfull links on how to get your hands on some H/H ammonia.
Keith.
Thanks for all your help everyone ive been putting fish flakes in now for about a week havent been able to get ammonia yet and today i tested the tap wwater and the tank water the tap water ammonia reading was just above 0 i think but not 0.25 tank water ammonia colour was exactly the same nitrite in tap and tank water was 0 nitrate in tap water was around 10 but in the tank it was a lot darker at around 80 what does this mean how do i have more nitrates in my tank if it hasnt cycled yet?
Aqua Tom
Fish Gatherer
If you have more Nitrate in your tank than in your tapwater it is good news, not bad. It means that your nitrite bacteria are breeding & producing nitrate as a waste product. Your cycle seems to have started.
oh thats good then ive been adding quite a lot of fish flakes and the ammonia and nitrite have never gone up i know its better to use pure ammonia but surely after all the flakes the ammonia or nitrite should have gone up a little in a week but it has never changed only the nitrate getting higher
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Hi Mark,
The issue with "cycling" is not that you want to see any specific readings of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate at any one time in particular but that you want to grow two very large colonies of two specific species of these bacteria and you need to do many days or weeks of readings and have some knowledge to interpret the long set of readings in order to actually know the status of the two colonies in your filter.
Going through the process of having a "fishless cycle thread" in our beginners forum here is all about the members slowly passing off that skill to you, so you learn it and have it for the future and also so that this particular tank hopefully gets cycled. The LFSs (and many books even) often give people the impression that "getting some bacteria" is just a little thing you do for a few days (or then the beginner decides, oh this is just going to be an irritation for a week or so, etc) which unfortunately often sets them up for a lot of frustration at various stages as they realize they haven't been told the whole story. The two species are -very- slow growers and even the process of "moving" them from tank to tank is tricky, but overall, a forum like this is a great way to get a better handle on understanding them.
Your fishless cycle is barely underway, and probably won't get really moving until you find the right ammonia and can begin to get more control. However the fishfood and cleanings from the other tank are really good startoff things to be doing and will hopefully be giving you quite a good headstart once you can dose and test in the days coming up. I'd expect an aided fishless cycle like yours to take maybe 2 to 4 weeks, but all fishless cycles vary wildly in the individual time they take, so it's just a process we each go through. Good luck and I know the members will keep helping you.
What's happening right now is that the first large colony of what we call A-Bacs in not yet large enough to create what we call a "nitrite spike" where they produce too much nitrite(NO2) for the second colony (the N-Bacs) to be able to start reproducing on in larger numbers. Getting that first colony is the first phase, getting the nitrite spike is the second phase and finally getting enough N-Bacs is the third phase of fishless cycling.
~~waterdrop~~
The issue with "cycling" is not that you want to see any specific readings of ammonia, nitrite or nitrate at any one time in particular but that you want to grow two very large colonies of two specific species of these bacteria and you need to do many days or weeks of readings and have some knowledge to interpret the long set of readings in order to actually know the status of the two colonies in your filter.
Going through the process of having a "fishless cycle thread" in our beginners forum here is all about the members slowly passing off that skill to you, so you learn it and have it for the future and also so that this particular tank hopefully gets cycled. The LFSs (and many books even) often give people the impression that "getting some bacteria" is just a little thing you do for a few days (or then the beginner decides, oh this is just going to be an irritation for a week or so, etc) which unfortunately often sets them up for a lot of frustration at various stages as they realize they haven't been told the whole story. The two species are -very- slow growers and even the process of "moving" them from tank to tank is tricky, but overall, a forum like this is a great way to get a better handle on understanding them.
Your fishless cycle is barely underway, and probably won't get really moving until you find the right ammonia and can begin to get more control. However the fishfood and cleanings from the other tank are really good startoff things to be doing and will hopefully be giving you quite a good headstart once you can dose and test in the days coming up. I'd expect an aided fishless cycle like yours to take maybe 2 to 4 weeks, but all fishless cycles vary wildly in the individual time they take, so it's just a process we each go through. Good luck and I know the members will keep helping you.
What's happening right now is that the first large colony of what we call A-Bacs in not yet large enough to create what we call a "nitrite spike" where they produce too much nitrite(NO2) for the second colony (the N-Bacs) to be able to start reproducing on in larger numbers. Getting that first colony is the first phase, getting the nitrite spike is the second phase and finally getting enough N-Bacs is the third phase of fishless cycling.
~~waterdrop~~
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