My Fishless Cycle

[fatheadminnow]

Na, the time is not too bad, try to check closer to your 24 hour mark.

Your readings look good. 0 ppm for ammonia and nitrite.

-FHM

 

[joeskandal]

what do you mean?
i check at about 8am, then about 8 or 9 pm, then add ammonia.

 

[fatheadminnow]

the 24 hour mark would be your 8 pm, and the 12 hour mark is your 8 am.

-FHM

 

[joeskandal]

cool. so you think it looks good?
how come the nitrite is almost 0 though?
am i nearly ready???

 

[fatheadminnow]

The nitrite is at 0 ppm because you are starting to colonize enough bacteria to process nitrite into nitrate at a faster rate.

-FHM

 

[joeskandal]

cool, so will it stay at zero now?
should i just see how it is over next few days?
cos i think im almost ready to do a water change.

 

[fatheadminnow]

Add ammonia up to 5 ppm. Your bacteria need to be able to take 5 ppm of ammonia and process it all the way to 0 ppm, along with nitrite all the way to 0 ppm, within 12 hours.

After this is happening, then you need to continue dosing ammonia up to 5 ppm for one more week. This is called the qualifying week where nitrite is sometimes prone to spike, for unknown reasons, and this is best to happen without fish in the tank. After the qualifying week is up, go ahead and do a 90% water change and add fish!

-FHM

 

[joeskandal]

okay mate, thats great.
Cheers...

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with FHM. Looking good.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[joeskandal]

yeah. it is looking good.
cant wait now...
hehe, this is really testing my patience.

 

[waterdrop]

yeah. it is looking good.
cant wait now...
hehe, this is really testing my patience.

I think this is a good point to make sure you understand that you're -entering- the third phase of fishless cycling, not necessarily -leaving- it. Your cycle is going very fast and looking very good but you don't want to get ahead of yourself and set yourself up for too much disappointment if the 3rd phase takes some time.

What's happening is the A-Bac (ammonia oxidizing bacteria) colony is quite big a robust and processes your 5ppm of ammonia down to zero pretty reliably in 24 hours. Your N-Bac (nitrite oxidizing bacteria) colony is just barely getting big enough that it has had its first time of processing the mountain of nitrite(NO2) (don't forget that the A-Bacs turn each 1ppm of ammonia in to 2.7ppm of NO2 so the N-Bacs have a lot more to process) down to zero within 24 hours. We don't know yet that the N-Bacs are -reliable- at doing this and we do know that they are not fast enough yet at doing it. We need them to get so big that they can process it down in 12 hours or even 9 or 8 hours. The turning point we've established as a compromise is that when they can do it in 12 hours then we start our "qualifying week" and watch both colonies do their thing within 12 hours repeatedly for a week. This is a tough test on them and often this will uncover traces of one or the other of ammonia or nitrite(NO2) not being processed within the 12 hours, in which case we know it was good that we were careful and challanged our colony size estimtates before doing the big change and adding fish.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[joeskandal]

i see.
So i had better not jump the gun yet then...
posted todays results, still looking good.

 

[fatheadminnow]

Looking good!

-FHM

 

[joeskandal]

Wow, the results are great these days.
What do you think???

 

[fatheadminnow]

Looking good. Make sure you are adding back up to 4-5 ppm of ammonia.

-FHM