Finshed Cycling?

[Fraoch]

sorry if some people have seen this before in my journal but i would just like to ask if my tank has finished its cycle. It has been running for 2 and a half weeks and i have been dosing with 6 drops of pure ammonia a day. I use API master liquid test kit. tha ammonia spiked to 1ppm, nitrites spiked to 5ppm and nitrates spiked to 40ppm but i cant be sure this was the highest they went cause i didnt test for a few days in the middle of the cycle cause i was too busy and forgot
Tested just now and the ammonia is 0, nitrite 0 and nitrates 10ppm.
so is my tank ready for a few fish yet?
thanks

oh forgot to say that i added mulm and squeezed filter media into the filters from 2 existing tanks to boost it.

 

[Aqua Tom]

Is your filter eating 5ppm of Ammonia & related Nitrites in 12 hours?

 

[Kev88]

What you should have done is put a bit of mature media into your new filter. If your filter is killing 5ppm of ammonia in about 10 hours you should be nearly there however your nitrites need to be crunched down too!

 

[Fraoch]

Is your filter eating 5ppm of Ammonia & related Nitrites in 12 hours?

yeh i think so this is what my chart looks like;
Date Ammonia Nitrite Nitrate
aug 12, 0.25, 0, 5,
aug13, 0.35, 0, 0,
aug14, 0.25, 0, 0,
16, 0.5, 0, 0,
20, 0.5, 0,
24, 0.75, 0.25,
27, 0.5, 5.0, 20,
28(am), 0.25, 2.0, 20,
29(am), 0, 0.25, 5.0,
29(pm), 0, 0, 10,

 

[Mola Mola]

yeh i think so this is what my chart looks like;
Date Ammonia Nitrite Nitrate
aug 12 0.25 0 5
aug13 0.35 0 0
aug14 0.25 0 0
16 0.5 0 0
20 0.5 0
24 0.75 0.25
27 0.5 5.0 20
28(am) 0.25 2.0 20
29(am) 0 0.25 5.0
29(pm) 0 0 10

Hi Fraoch. You say that you are adding 6 drops of pure ammonia each day, but do you know how much that increases the ammonia ppm to?

Rather than adding a certain amount of ammonia, you need to be aiming to raise the ammonia to 5ppm, and then looking for all of that to be converted through to nitrate in 12 hours.

It may be that you are already doing that, but it isn't clear from your posts or your chart.

 

[Fraoch]

yeh i think so this is what my chart looks like;
Date Ammonia Nitrite Nitrate
aug 12 0.25 0 5
aug13 0.35 0 0
aug14 0.25 0 0
16 0.5 0 0
20 0.5 0
24 0.75 0.25
27 0.5 5.0 20
28(am) 0.25 2.0 20
29(am) 0 0.25 5.0
29(pm) 0 0 10

Hi Fraoch. You say that you are adding 6 drops of pure ammonia each day, but do you know how much that increases the ammonia ppm to?

Rather than adding a certain amount of ammonia, you need to be aiming to raise the ammonia to 5ppm, and then looking for all of that to be converted through to nitrate in 12 hours.

It may be that you are already doing that, but it isn't clear from your posts or your chart.

so if i added ammonia untill my tests showed 5ppm and then tested it tomorrow and it back to 0 and the nitrites ot 0 it should be fine?

 

[Mola Mola]

so if i added ammonia untill my tests showed 5ppm and then tested it tomorrow and it back to 0 and the nitrites ot 0 it should be fine?

Yes, exactly, it should be converting it all in 12 hours. You might want to repeat it for a few more days, to double check, but yes that is what you are aiming for.

 

[Fraoch]

so if i added ammonia untill my tests showed 5ppm and then tested it tomorrow and it back to 0 and the nitrites ot 0 it should be fine?

Yes, exactly. You might want to repeat it for a few more days, to double check, but yes that is what you are aiming for.

ok thanks so much, ill update tomorrow

 

[Mola Mola]

ok thanks so much, ill update tomorrow

No problem. Just to clarify, it needs to do the conversion in 12 hours, so you want to dose at, say, 9pm and then check at 9am tomorrow morning.

 

[waterdrop]

What we've found over the years to be really reliable is to dose the tank to 5ppm ammonia concentration and then measure 12 hours later to see if both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero ppm and to repeat this test day after day for a week. Especially in cases where the overall fishless cycled has proceeded for less than a month, the double-zero readings can sometimes fool you for several days and then spike again - this is what the week "qualification" catches.

WD

 

[Fraoch]

well last night i tryed to add 5ppm ammonia and ended up with over 8 so i tested it again at half 8 this morning and it was somewhere between 4 and 8 ppm with 0.25 nitrites.
Tested right now and its ammonia at 4 and nitrite at 2.
so guess my tank isnt cycled

 

[Mola Mola]

well last night i tryed to add 5ppm ammonia and ended up with over 8 so i tested it again at half 8 this morning and it was somewhere between 4 and 8 ppm with 0.25 nitrites.
Tested right now and its ammonia at 4 and nitrite at 2.
so guess my tank isnt cycled

No, it doesn't look like it. It's hard to tell how close you might be, because you're not really sure how much ammonia you put in.

Wait until the ammonia hits 0 again, and then aim to get it up to 5ppm (you probably have a better idea of the quantity of ammonia you need for that now).

It looks like you are probably getting a good amount of ammonia conversion so, in the worst case, you are probably very close to the halfway point (because when the ammonia conversion starts to take off, it goes from almost nothing to doing the whole 5ppm very quickly).

 

[Fraoch]

managed to add 5ppm last night and tested just now and ammonia has gone down to 0.5ppm but nitrites still up at 5

 

[Mola Mola]

managed to add 5ppm last night and tested just now and ammonia has gone down to 0.5ppm but nitrites still up at 5

Great. So it looks like you are probably well over the halfway point of your cycling.

I would suggest that from now on you just dose 2-3ppm each day (so about half of what you have been dosing for the past couple of days) and do a test every 24 hours, until the nitrite starts to drop.

Once nitrite is clear after 24 hours, you can start with 12 hour tests, and then you'll be getting very close.

 

[Fraoch]

well the results arent really making any sense any more, ive been trying to add the same amount of ammonia every day but everytime i test it its all over the place but the filter seems to be eating under 2ppm in 24hours. The pH is all over the place aswell, jumping from 6 to 6.6 to 6.4 and back 6 again in week. The nitrites seem to shoot up just after ammonia is added but go back to 0 before the ammonia does and nitrates are up at 160ppm right now