fulltilt
New Member
If you've read my threads you'll know a few things - I'm new - no, REALLY new!. I bought my first tank ever just before Christmas (second tank shortly after that ) and first put water in ANY tank on Dec 30,2005 but there is some weird things happening.
First, I got a 6' tank that needed some work (lids, foam base, etc), so while I was hunting down supplies I got a 4' tank ready to go. Here's the basic run-down :
- the 4' tank was ready to go pretty much. I tagged it as the "LFS tank" as I will do everything that the LFS tells me to do with this tank. I added Sera Nitrivec for 10 days, and have tested for pH, NO2 and NH3 on (almost) a daily basis since Dec 31. On Jan 7 I added plants and some fish (causing a bit of debate on here), but everything is going well and I haven't lost a fish - yet . Yesterday's readings did show a NO2 spike (of 0.2) after my highest NH3 reading ever on the 10th (of 1.0). So obviously the tank wasn't fully cycled, but with only 6 fish it's probably getting there soon.
- The 6' tank is more of a long term project, so I've taken my time with that and tagged it the "internet tank". This tank will be a full fishless cycle as advised by rdd, and I've tracked down ammonia and done all the right things for this tank. I had to buy gravel, so washed that as well. Sourced a foam base (eventually) and basically took my time getting the thing setup and operational. Working through the first few paragraphs of the fishless cycle I have the filters running, airstone in place, and the water temp stable at 90. I have NOT added ammonia yet. Yesterday, I was going to sit down and calculate the quantity of ammonia to add to get 6ppm, but I took a 'control' reading first and to my surprise :
pH : 7.2 - just like I expected, because the other tank is
NO2 : 0.1 - WHAT??? ... the NO2 reading on my other tank (4') after "bottle cycling" for 10 days and fish in there for 7 always had a 0.0 reading, and yesterday had 0.2
NH3 : 0.25 - the usual reading in my other tank (4') until I added fish.
What is happening here ?
Has the tank started to cycle itself ?
I haven't added anything to it at all - just the water. It's been running for maybe 2 weeks while we "admire the bubbles" from the airstone and dream of what we will do, but has the tank started cycling itself ?
Yesterday, I did add plants to it as well - some pieces snipped off the plants in my other tank, and what is left of a round-leafed plant that the snails have almost demolished.
Another reason why I haven't started cycling the tank, is that my test kit does not test for NO3, so I was going to buy a kit that does that before I started adding ammonia.
Any advice would be great
First, I got a 6' tank that needed some work (lids, foam base, etc), so while I was hunting down supplies I got a 4' tank ready to go. Here's the basic run-down :
- the 4' tank was ready to go pretty much. I tagged it as the "LFS tank" as I will do everything that the LFS tells me to do with this tank. I added Sera Nitrivec for 10 days, and have tested for pH, NO2 and NH3 on (almost) a daily basis since Dec 31. On Jan 7 I added plants and some fish (causing a bit of debate on here), but everything is going well and I haven't lost a fish - yet . Yesterday's readings did show a NO2 spike (of 0.2) after my highest NH3 reading ever on the 10th (of 1.0). So obviously the tank wasn't fully cycled, but with only 6 fish it's probably getting there soon.
- The 6' tank is more of a long term project, so I've taken my time with that and tagged it the "internet tank". This tank will be a full fishless cycle as advised by rdd, and I've tracked down ammonia and done all the right things for this tank. I had to buy gravel, so washed that as well. Sourced a foam base (eventually) and basically took my time getting the thing setup and operational. Working through the first few paragraphs of the fishless cycle I have the filters running, airstone in place, and the water temp stable at 90. I have NOT added ammonia yet. Yesterday, I was going to sit down and calculate the quantity of ammonia to add to get 6ppm, but I took a 'control' reading first and to my surprise :
pH : 7.2 - just like I expected, because the other tank is
NO2 : 0.1 - WHAT??? ... the NO2 reading on my other tank (4') after "bottle cycling" for 10 days and fish in there for 7 always had a 0.0 reading, and yesterday had 0.2
NH3 : 0.25 - the usual reading in my other tank (4') until I added fish.
What is happening here ?
Has the tank started to cycle itself ?
I haven't added anything to it at all - just the water. It's been running for maybe 2 weeks while we "admire the bubbles" from the airstone and dream of what we will do, but has the tank started cycling itself ?
Yesterday, I did add plants to it as well - some pieces snipped off the plants in my other tank, and what is left of a round-leafed plant that the snails have almost demolished.
Another reason why I haven't started cycling the tank, is that my test kit does not test for NO3, so I was going to buy a kit that does that before I started adding ammonia.
Any advice would be great