Missed Adding Ammonia Today During My Fishless Cycle?

[Gruffle]

Hi

I'm in stage 2 of my fishless cycling, adding 3ppm of ammonia every 24 hours, which is being reduced to 0 in about 14 hours ish, waiting for my nitrite munching bacteria to grow.

I forgot to add my daily dose of ammonia this morning, i'm now sat at work wondering if I have wasted the last 2 weeks and will have to start again, or will they be able to last till tonight when I get home to add some ammonia (36 hours after last adding).

I have maybe a dozen (maybe more, i dunno, they hitchhiked on my plants) small snails in the tank, presumably they will be contributing _some_ waste to the tank but not much?

*fingers crossed*

 

[jonnyf84]

I don't cycle this way but i do i have a good grasp of the process. Your snails won't make much difference but your tank should be fine, don't worry about it anyway - it might set you back a day or two, just dose as normal when you get home.

 

[Gruffle]

Yeah thats what i was thinking, I have an overwhelming sense of paranoia when it comes to the unknown so I thought it would be better to ask!

 

[minxfishy]

Dont worry just dose as normal when you get home and test again tomorrow, you may have lost a few ammonia fighting bacteria but not much, I often when doing a fishless cycle forget to dose and then just do it when I remember, not had a problem so far

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, you will be fine, you will probably not even notice any slowdown. The bacteria are very slow to start a die-off and only a tiny, unnoticeable percentage of die-off would begin occurring during the short delay in ammonia you are talking about.

The 3 stages of bacteria worry:
1) Lack of ammonia: not much effect the first couple of days.
2) Lack of power to run the filter: not much effect the first 5 or 6 hours, then manual water exchanges need to be happening
3) Drying out of bacteria: This is very serious and causes a large die-off very quickly, but not necessarily completely right away.

Other weird dangers to bacteria
1) Water change without conditioner: Most mature robust fully cycled filters can withstand this with maybe a mini-cycle but very young cycling ones may be killed.
2) Bacteria frozen solid: They're dead. (refridgerated, they're ok) (boiled, they're dead)
3) Bacteria in sunlight: Well, if they're out in it and dry out, they die fast. They don't like to grow in sunlight.
4) Bacteria in pure RO water: With no carbonate hardness they can't or can hardly grow. Also no iron is supposedly bad.

(all this stuff can be argued of course, just making some generalizations here)
~~waterdrop~~

 

[lana]

Hi

I'm in stage 2 of my fishless cycling, adding 3ppm of ammonia every 24 hours, which is being reduced to 0 in about 14 hours ish, waiting for my nitrite munching bacteria to grow.

I forgot to add my daily dose of ammonia this morning, i'm now sat at work wondering if I have wasted the last 2 weeks and will have to start again, or will they be able to last till tonight when I get home to add some ammonia (36 hours after last adding).

I have maybe a dozen (maybe more, i dunno, they hitchhiked on my plants) small snails in the tank, presumably they will be contributing _some_ waste to the tank but not much?

*fingers crossed*

if you don't want a tank full of those little snails start picking them out i had them and i keep picking them out the breed like rabbits do some research on them

 

[Corleone]

Check the species identification thread in the invertebrate section, find out what kind of snail you have. Malaysian trumpet snails are often considered beneficial in planted tanks, and personally I think MTS+ramshorns are the ultimate cleanup crew, and both can be controlled without special attention (I have ramshorn, trumpet, apple, and nerite snails in my planted tank, they keep things amazingly clean and don't overrun the place). If they're pond snails, they can breed rapidly. It's possible to control them, but harder than with other snails. If you plan to get any kind of loach, don't worry about them.