Fishless Cycling

[BrookeLea]

For two weeks now I've been doing a fishless cycle on my tank by adding ammonia to it every day. Two days ago I was starting to get frustrated because there was still no nitrite spike. I decided just to quit adding the ammonia, because it seemed too much. I figured I'd just stop adding it and let the ammonia eaters catch up. I was so frustrated that I didn't test the water at all yesterday. I didn't even touch the tank. I didn't add any ammonia to it today, either. I just now went and did a water test and found that the ammonia has dropped to about 2.0, the nitrates are up to about 40ppm and the nitrites have spiked off the charts! I'm so excited that something is finally happening here! hah

So...my question is...what do I do now? Should I just leave it alone and let it do it's thing? (That's really what I'm thinking I should do, but I don't know for sure.) Will the nitrites just drop on their own?

 

[SkiFletch]

The nitrites will drop on their own. Your goal now is to add about 3-5ppm of ammonia daily and allow the tank to process it back to zero ppm in a 24 hour period. This will keep your ammonia-eaters alive while the nitrite eaters grow their colonies. Eventually (another 1-2 weeks) you'll see the nitrite come back down to zero. When that happens and you're adding 3-5ppm of ammonia daily to see 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite after 24 hours you're cycled. Do a massive water change (90%) with dechlorinated water to remove all the excess nitrAtes and go ahead and add fish

 

[rdd1952]

You're on your way. Ski Fletch is right. Just keep adding ammonia back up to 3 to 5 ppm everytime it drops back near 0. Once the nitrite drops to zero and you can add the ammonia of 3 to 5 ppm and both ammonia and nitrite are back to 0 in about 12 hours you are done. Do the big water change and add your fish.

 

[BrookeLea]

Thanks guys! Woo hoo! haha I feel so silly being all excited over this little bitty thing. haha

 

[rdd1952]

It's always exciting when you know you are about ready to buy fish.

 

[SkiFletch]

Amen to that I should be approaching that day myself. 10 days and my ammonia dropped to 0 for me. Today is day 9 of my nitrite spike . Hoping to go home and see it on the decline...

 

[paulhir]

Sorry guys, i was a little confused, what does ppm mean? im also fishless cycling and it sbeen over two weeks, ive been adding a pinch full of fish flake everyday 3 days for 2 weeks and nothing happend last saturady when i took a sample to my lfs...

should i be adding more flake and more often?

 

[modernhamlet]

Sorry guys, i was a little confused, what does ppm mean? im also fishless cycling and it sbeen over two weeks, ive been adding a pinch full of fish flake everyday 3 days for 2 weeks and nothing happend last saturady when i took a sample to my lfs...

should i be adding more flake and more often?

If you want to successfully fishless cycle, you really need 2 things:
1. your own test kit for ammonia and nitrite
2. pure ammonia

Respectively, having the LFS perform the tests and using fishfood are poor substitutes, IMO...