Fishless Cycling Record

[southcity]

I am getting excited, today my nitrites are dropping after my last dose of ammonia 12hrs ago. Nitrites down to .25ppm yay me!!!! getting there, maybe only a couple of weeks to go now!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I assume you're aware that what you want is double zeros for ammonia and nitrite both at 12 hours after dosing in order to start your qualifying week, right? WD

 

[southcity]

Yes, I assume you're aware that what you want is double zeros for ammonia and nitrite both at 12 hours after dosing in order to start your qualifying week, right? WD

Yes, working towards that finally. Not at 0 yet but darn close to it.

 

[waterdrop]

OK, good, you've got the right idea. Sometimes late in the game you'll get what we call the "sticking problem" where (nitrite usually, but sometimes ammonia, surprisingly) one of them will drop each day but kind of "stick" at about 0.25ppm without going to zero ppm. (All this assuming you have zero in your tap, which is always my assumption in discussions unless explicitly talked about.) Anyway, the sticking problem will nearly always eventually go away, given enough time, but it's been known to drive many fishless cyclers crazy at the end, even to the point that they are willing to risk a fish-in cycle (which usually doesn't happen to them anyway if they've been cycling at least more than a month overall.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[southcity]

OK, good, you've got the right idea. Sometimes late in the game you'll get what we call the "sticking problem" where (nitrite usually, but sometimes ammonia, surprisingly) one of them will drop each day but kind of "stick" at about 0.25ppm without going to zero ppm. (All this assuming you have zero in your tap, which is always my assumption in discussions unless explicitly talked about.) Anyway, the sticking problem will nearly always eventually go away, given enough time, but it's been known to drive many fishless cyclers crazy at the end, even to the point that they are willing to risk a fish-in cycle (which usually doesn't happen to them anyway if they've been cycling at least more than a month overall.)

~~waterdrop~~

Funny you should mention the Nirtite sticking. Mine was off the charts for days then suddenly in 12hrs dropped to about .25ppm, two days later it is remaining at about .05ppm. Not a worry for me, I will just have no choice but to wait it out and let it get to 0 before I consider myself in my last week. I did read on the another thread about cycling that the Nitrite can take twice as long as the ammonia to drop, so if that is the case I just might be in for another month or so, hope not but time will tell.

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, that twice as long thing is just another of our "guesstimates" just to be telling people stuff. The basic truth still holds that each stage varies all over the place in different individual instances. It's just that the second (nitrite) stage is almost always longer than the first stage except in cases of some sort of media seeding.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[woody88]

Yeah, that twice as long thing is just another of our "guesstimates" just to be telling people stuff. The basic truth still holds that each stage varies all over the place in different individual instances. It's just that the second (nitrite) stage is almost always longer than the first stage except in cases of some sort of media seeding.

~~waterdrop~~

Never fried a fishless cycle before. I've always gone with a couple of hardy fish, large daily water changes, and fingers crossed they survive, and so far in the 4 tanks ive setup, ive never lost a fish during a cycle.
Guess the large daily wc help, freshening the water up.

Don't think I could wait a month for the tank to cycle tbh.

Question tho. Why is it lfs say you need to leave the tank for a week with nothing in there and you can add fish.
Surely if its just water and a filter in there, you'll never get amm, trite, trate because there's nothing to start the process.

Bleeding lfs and their dumbazz advice!.

Glad ive been doing it for a few years tbh.

Believe it or not it's actually EASIER, a lot easier to cycle a marine tank and that can be done in a couple of days with cured live rock and nothing else!

 

[southcity]

Well for quite a few days (8) the ammonia was going from 4ppm to 0 in 12hrs or less. Now as of 2 days ago it suddenly is taking 24hrs to get back to 0. Is this common? Not really wanting to go backwards