Fishless Cycle Log

[Diesel Trout]

Any opinion on Queens U. in Kingston? On one of our college lists to look at...

From what I have heard, Queen's is a pretty good school and fairly high ranked University. Kingston is a nice town too.

 

[OldMan47]

If you are checking out colleges in Canada, don't foret to check McGill too. Of course if you wanted an AG program the university at Guelph is well worth checking into. It is where my farmer cousin took his degree.

 

[Diesel Trout]

Day 70 (i.e. week 10) has been updated at the top of this excruciating post.

Remember that patience I had? Well it's all gone now. Ammonia still at 1.0 after 24 hours. Wasn't I doing better than this 40 days ago? I don't know what's going on.

 

[joel.uejio]

Forgive me for jumping into this thread so far along in the conversation, but here's what I would say:

If you're seeing levels of Ammonia and Nitrite dropping, and levels of Nitrate rising, then you must have ~some~ amount of both kinds of beneficial bacteria. Based on that I would consider doing the following:

Huge water change
Test to confirm that you're at Ammo = 0, Nitrite = 0, Nitrate <= 20 or so
Add a small percentage of your stocking
STOP all dosing / buffering
Conduct daily tests
Do large water changes if any ammo or nitrite is detected
Add more of your stock slowly over time

I followed this approach with 2 of my tanks and never saw any ammo or nitrite after adding the first fish. Both are lightly stocked though, and moderately planted.

Cheers.

 

[OldMan47]

You are completely correct Joel. A fish-in cycle can be conducted in place of a fishless cycle if you finally lose all patience. Instead of testing every day or two and being mildly upset about not having a cycled tank, you can test twice a day and do 50% water changes daily while being mildly upset about not having a yccled tank. IMO it is better to endure a few tests and some frustration than need to do daily 50% water changes with the same frustration.

 

[Diesel Trout]

You are completely correct Joel. A fish-in cycle can be conducted in place of a fishless cycle if you finally lose all patience. Instead of testing every day or two and being mildly upset about not having a cycled tank, you can test twice a day and do 50% water changes daily while being mildly upset about not having a yccled tank. IMO it is better to endure a few tests and some frustration than need to do daily 50% water changes with the same frustration.

Doing 50% water changes daily sounds like a complete waste of water in my opinion, especially in this day of conservationism. Do you have any other words of wisdom OM? What if I set my sights on 2 ppm ammonia to achieve my nitrogen cycle then understock my tank to start?

 

[OldMan47]

That can and does work for about a 50 to 75% stocking level DT. I have seen miss wiggle (the one with the Mary Poppins avatar) suggest that the small investment in time for a proper cycle can be weighed against a lifetime hobby and seem small in the balance. I have never been able to convince myself of it though, so I doubt that I will convince you to think of it that way either. I fully understand your frustration and always jump start my cycles from an established tank that I trust, one of my own that has been clean for over a year with no problems.

 

[joel.uejio]

...A fish-in cycle can be conducted in place of a fishless cycle if you finally lose all patience...

Sorry if unclear, but I'm not suggesting abandoning a fishless cycle for a fish-in. What I'm trying to say is that making your goal to process 4-5 ppm ammonia in 12 hours is only necessary if you plan to stock an amount of fish that will generate 4-5 ppm ammonia in 12 hours.

In my latest fishless cycling effort in a 75g I got to a point where I was processing less than that, but I've only stocked 6 fish, all 2-4". Since stocking I've had 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite.

So, I definitely wouldn't suggest dropping in a full-grown oscar or 30 rainbowfish since that's a lot of bioload, but I probably would consider a 3" baby oscar, or 10 rainbows. My reading of your #'s is that your tank can support that bioload.

Apologies if I'm turning your thread into a "cycling round table". Good luck with your tank, Diesel Trout!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, the idea of reducing the goal to 50 or 75% stocking and guessing at a lower ppm like 2 or 3 within 12 hours has been done some and can work, although my observation from cases here is with somewhat less reliability. The "5ppm in 12 hours" is not simply a matter of trying to match a particular bioload. The two details of ending a fishless cycle: "5ppm in 12 hours" and "qualifying week" are both ways better ensuring that the transition from fishless cycling (with the big regular pulses of ammonia pulsing through) to the always smaller and differently patterned ammonia stream from the fish load will be reliable and solid rather than resulting in mini-cycles and further fish-in cycling. Its really about trying to find a crude way to be able to trust more that the bacterial colonies and their biofilms are robust enough for the transition and drop-down. The observation was that a subset of people were reaching double-zeros, transitioning to fish right away and then suffering a setback. To the extent that these, admittedly more conservative, ending guidelines were followed, we saw better results. As is always true, not much can be predicted for a given individual case. WD

 

[joel.uejio]

Yes, I've seen a lot of posts where you and/or OldMan47 have helped new hobbyists through cycling, so I'm sure you've seen a lot of different scenarios.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'll step aside now so the OP can continue on with his cycling thread. Hope things are going well, DieselTrout!

Take care.

 

[Diesel Trout]

Day 73 updated way up there on page 1.

I understand what you are talking about WD, however I do not expect to fully stock my tank initially anyway which is why I suggested dropping down the ammonia dosing. Right now I have about 10 inches of adult fish to add, and am planning to put in around 20 inches of new juvenile fish (corys, rummynose, hatchets(?) a pleco), then later on add some dwarf SA cichlids. So in the short term I am looking at only about 50%.

Ammonia still not dropping as (I think) it should. Hanging in there...

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, well its never a good thing to get too set in our ways and the other side of the coin is that we do indeed also see situations where some residual amount of ammonia or nitrite keeps showing up on and on but when the cycler just gives up on it and does the big water change and switches over to fish, the ammonia and nitrite drop to zero and are never seen again. OM can correct me but I do feel we've seen a number of cases that could be described this way and I'm not sure what the best explanation would be although there have been times (not saying this would be your case) when I've thought perhaps the particular filter involved was having trouble up at the 5ppm concentration but didn't at a lower concentration.. if that makes any sense. WD

 

[Diesel Trout]

Yes, well its never a good thing to get too set in our ways and the other side of the coin is that we do indeed also see situations where some residual amount of ammonia or nitrite keeps showing up on and on but when the cycler just gives up on it and does the big water change and switches over to fish, the ammonia and nitrite drop to zero and are never seen again. OM can correct me but I do feel we've seen a number of cases that could be described this way and I'm not sure what the best explanation would be although there have been times (not saying this would be your case) when I've thought perhaps the particular filter involved was having trouble up at the 5ppm concentration but didn't at a lower concentration.. if that makes any sense. WD

I wonder if I have enough media in my canister. The bottom trays have the Fluval pre-filter, the next tray up has carbon (which WILL be removed), then the top two layers have the Bio-max. That being said, none of the trays are full to the top with media (ignoring the carbon). Could it be that I do not have enough media to support 4-5 ppm of ammonia?

 

[waterdrop]

A big Fluval 404 with biomax in two trays and carbon in another should have no problem whatsoever being enough biomedia! I sometimes have a bit of a feeling that large setups will be a bit slow getting their colonies established but then suddenly, one day, the colony size will do one of its doublings, show double-zeros and then be very, very robust from then on. (no data, just a feeling that they tend to "studder" less in their results than smaller filters do..)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Diesel Trout]

A big Fluval 404 with biomax in two trays and carbon in another should have no problem whatsoever being enough biomedia! I sometimes have a bit of a feeling that large setups will be a bit slow getting their colonies established but then suddenly, one day, the colony size will do one of its doublings, show double-zeros and then be very, very robust from then on. (no data, just a feeling that they tend to "studder" less in their results than smaller filters do..)

~~waterdrop~~

I HOPE so, and I am eagerly waiting for that "one day".

Readings are in for day 75. No new news to report.