My fishless cycling results so far .....

[Aqua Andy]

Hi,

here are my fishless cycling results so far for my brand new 8 UK gallon tank planted with three live plants and one piece of driftwood kept at a temperature of approximately 24 C with 12 hours of lighting:

Sunday 31/07/2005

Setup tank and turned on air pump/filter, lighting and heating.

Wednesday 03/08/2005

Ammonia 1.00 ppm
Nitrite 0.25 ppm
Nitrate 10.00 ppm

Thursday 04/08/2005

5 drops of ammonia solution

Friday 05/08/2005

Ammonia 1.00 ppm
Nitrite 1.00 ppm
Nitrate 20.00 ppm

5 drops of ammonia solution

Saturday 06/08/2005

Ammonia 1.00 ppm
Nitrite 2.00 ppm
Nitrate 40.00 ppm

5 drops of ammonia solution

(2 & 1/2 hours later) Ammonia 1.00 ppm

How do you think things are going?

Do I need to increase the amount of ammonia solution I am adding to the tank?

I'm using a 10% ammonia solution.

Thanks for reading my post.


Andy

 

[rdd1952]

It sounds like things are going well. How much ammonia did you start with: 1 ppm, 2 ppm, etc? Seeing it drop from 5 or 6 ppm in the first 4 days is pretty quick. Did you seed the tank with media from an existing tank? If you have only had the ammonia to about 1 or 2 ppm, you probably do need to up it a bit. That amount won't cycle the tank for a full fish load. You need to raise it to about 5 ppm at least once and then wait for it to drop. After that, keep doing what you are doing until the nitrite drops to zero.