Cycling In A 5 Gallon Bucket

[4seasons]

I have a crazy idea and was wondering if anyone had tried it before.

I have another thread about my son's ten gallons betta setup where I am trying a fish in cycle. 3 weeks in and no nitrites showing up yet so I am getting a little tired of waiting. Since I have no friends with a mature tank to bum some filter media off of I thought I would try to make my on. Here's what I have on hand.

1. 5 gallon "clean" bucket (as in not an empty paint bucket or some other chemical)
2. small corner filter (air stone/ pump driven type)
3. air pump, air stone, gang valve and enough air line to set it up.
4. Sponge and filter floss
5. 5 lbs aquarium gravel
6. 25 watt heater
7. thermometer
8. dechlorinator

Now since this will be a fish-less cycle I need a supply of ammonia. That is where my struggle starts. I read the where to get ammonia thread and it was full of broken links and dead ends. So here is what I found.

All grocery store ammonia has surfactant in it. I don't know what surfactant causes in a fish-less cycle but read that you don't want that. I found this it Wal-Mart.

Thinking I had found what I needed I bought it but on further investigation I shook it and it bubbled and when I read the label it says contains surfactant. Oh well, my trash cans needed cleaning anyway

P.S. Being new to this forum I couldn't figure out how to post all my pics in one post so I have 3 follow up post that are a continuation of this post. No disrespect intended to to the couple of quick responses to my post but please read all 4 of my post as it is one thought combined.

P.P.S. Thank you to This Old Spouse as that is exactly where I found the ammonia I used and Waterdrop (my somewhat close neighbor in this World wide web) for your very quick responses. I am not the fastest on the computer and you both got just a little ahead of me and my thought process.

 

[4seasons]

On the back of the label it says

So I went to 2 grocery stores and both Family Dollar and Dollar General. Everything says Ammonia Hydroxide and Surfactant.

 

[4seasons]

I found this at a local grocery store, and it passed the shake test.

I shook it and the bubbles went away in less than a second but when I read the back it said

In case that picture isn't very clear it says:
Ingredients: Ammonia Hydroxide and Surfactant
So either the shake test isn't reliable or this has so little surfactant in it it might have worked

 

[This Old Spouse]

I read somewhere along the way that you can get the right ammonia at Ace or True Value hardware.

 

[waterdrop]

Wow, really bad luck getting TWO brands of household ammonia that happened to also contain surfactants. If you are USA, I know we used to always point people toward a particular brand of hardware store chain that happened to have a generic ammonia that worked well. We could probably find that in a few back searches of posts made by me and containing the strings USA and ammonia.

Couple of things here. Doing fish-in cycles with a single fish are very few small fish has a very different feel than many of our writeups. The process proceeds very very slowly and is usually difficult to measure but it often works out ok. Sometimes you just don't see the spikes along the way, you just eventually realize you aren't getting extra ammonia beyond what's coming in via your particular tap water. Of course you keep testing on quite a regular daily basis.

You can indeed cycle in a bucket (I've done it) but remember that a fishless cycle is matching the colony size of the two species of bacteria to the -volume- of water you are cycling in. So if the bucket is very different from the tank you will use the filter in then the idea of an initial full stocking of course won't hold. Often though it can help with just getting things started, which is what people are usually after when they do this.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[4seasons]

So I went to Ace Hardware and found this

Now this one passed the shake test but it has no ingredients listed so I hope it is the right thing.
So I got home filled a 5 gallon bucket with water 5 lbs of gravel, put the sponge and filter floss in the corner filter (with a little gravel to hold it down) added some dechlorinator to the water hooked up the air pump, gang valve, and an extra air stone (for some more aeration and agitation) and checked my water before adding anything.
PH 8.2 (The water here is full of deposits, water heater is full of calcium and lime buildup)
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 0.0
So I added 1/2 a tablespoon of 10% ammonia to the bucket (way too much I thought I had the teaspoon in my hand when I was measuring) Then did a water change adding the dechlorinator back as I went to bring the ammonia concentration back down to 4ppm.
So my question is:
1. Has anyone tried this before?
A. Did it work?
B. Is there anything wrong with my method?
C. Did you do anything different?
2. Am I using the right ammonia as it doesn't have an ingredient list and one of the ones that listed surfactant as an ingredient passed the shake test?
3. What exactly is a surfactant and why do you not want to use an ammonia that has it for a fishless cycle?
4. Do you think I can get a cycled media faster using this idea than just waiting on a single betta to cycle a 10 gallon tank? (With constant water test and water changes obviously, I don't want my 4 year old's Betta to suffer and die)
5. I am setting the heater up to maintain 85 fahrenheit (30 Celsius) is this right or should I adjust for faster results?

 

[waterdrop]

You've now got the right ammonia. That is the same one I found, shook, looked at in the store and then recommended to the forums and after that lots and lots of people used it successfully for fishless cycling.

As mentioned above, cycling in a bucket can work. It is physically more awkward than a tank but it can work ok and I've done it.

Your fish-in cycle has a 3 week head start. The fishless cycle will take a long time, just like the fish-in cycle, so no, I don't think this will speed anything up at all but it might be a good learning experience for you and who knows, it might work where there is some other problem with the fish-in cycle, there is always that slight possibility.

The worst part for nearly all beginners is often the weeks and weeks where sometimes very little or nothing happens. Cycling from nothing is a pretty weird experience sometimes, it just keeps seeming like nothing is ever going to happen and then one day you get a real jolt when you see that... yes it has! But it is very hard to trust a bunch of stuff you are hearing on a forum, so everyone kind of has to experience it for themselves and the experiences are often quite different, further confusing the various communications beginners have with each other.

You can read about surfactants on wikipedia. I think of them kind of like soaps. If I remember correctly they are quite bad in the gills. Your pH sounds great, the bacteria really like it up there and your temp is about right, I might try to ease it down to 84F but that is a nit.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[FishFanatic04]

I used the one from ace hardware and it worked just fine

 

[fluttermoth]

Can I just ask why you've got gravel in the bucket?

 

[4seasons]

Can I just ask why you've got gravel in the bucket?

2 reasons for the gravel. First the corner filter wants to float so some gravel went in the filter to hold it down and some around the base to anchor it in. Second I have heard from a few sources that the bacteria will form on and in the gravel as well as the filter so I figured it would help my chances. Even had one lady that runs a fish store tell me that the gravel is where the cycle occurs not in the filter, but I am not inclined to believe a lot that lady says as she runs the fish store with the worst reputation in my area.

Well 4 reasons really, third I had some extra laying around. Fourth I didn't see any way that it could hurt.

 

[This Old Spouse]

I guess that about covers it! LOL!

 

[fluttermoth]

Can I just ask why you've got gravel in the bucket?

2 reasons for the gravel. First the corner filter wants to float so some gravel went in the filter to hold it down and some around the base to anchor it in. Second I have heard from a few sources that the bacteria will form on and in the gravel as well as the filter so I figured it would help my chances. Even had one lady that runs a fish store tell me that the gravel is where the cycle occurs not in the filter, but I am not inclined to believe a lot that lady says as she runs the fish store with the worst reputation in my area.

Well 4 reasons really, third I had some extra laying around. Fourth I didn't see any way that it could hurt.

Fair enough!

It is true, you may get a tiny amount of bacteria on the gravel, but it will be minimal. I would say it's not worth the bother, but it won't do any harm

 

[FishFanatic04]

Probably makes the bottom of the bucket look prettier. There's a fifth reason for ya!

Goodluck on a speedy bucket cycle.

 

[4seasons]

Today I noticed the first drop in ammonia but the nitrite test didn't show anything. Am I wrong in assuming that if the ammonia dropped from 4ppm to 2ppm that I should now have 2ppm of nitrite?
Should I re-dose ammonia back up to 4?

 

[FishFanatic04]

I think I would wait and see what it does.