New Tank, New Fluval U2 Fishless Cycle Log

[br3ach]

So I have recently bought my first ever tropical fish tank and luckily for any fish I intended to buy I read the fishless cycling thread first.

It took me a while to get hold of ammonia but I have been running a few days now so thought I would start to log everything here for anyone who is interested and also for advice if needed.

A - Ammonia
Ni - Nitrite
Na - Nitrate

Here are my stats so far:

14/05/09 - A 5ppm
15/05/09 - A 5ppm Ni 0ppm Na0ppm
16/05/09 - A 5ppm
17/05/09 - A 5ppm
18/05/09 - A 5ppm
19/05/09 - A 5ppm

I am not going to record Nitrite or Nitrates again until I notice the Ammonia dropping at all as it seems a waste of my test kit in the early stages. Is there anything wrong with this?

I have just paid to have some mature media posted to me from tom_os on this board and should be receiving that tomorrow. I intend to add this straight into my filter and hope that will speed things along a bit.

Are my results so far normal?

Thanks for reading

 

[OldMan47]

It looks normal to me so far. Your new (old) media should shorten the whole cycle down to only a week or so. That means that things will catch up to you very soon. You need to start thinking about what you are going to do moving forward.

 

[flyhawk]

looks good
i agree with old man47
keeping old media speeds it up
i started a fishless cycle with old material in
my ehiem classic and it spedthings up a ton!

 

[br3ach]

Thanks for the replies guys. My media has arrived and I will be adding it within the next hour so hopefully will be getting the ammonia readings dropping quite quickly within the next couple of days.

I will keep posting the stats here as I go to see exactly how much difference adding established media actually makes

Thanks to tom_os for posting it too! Although I am not so sure the other people receiving mail from the same postman as me are going to appreciate their mail smelling of ammonia that leaked lol

 

[br3ach]

Is it possible for Ammonia to be too high? I added the media and now the test kits has gone darker green, alomst too dark for the chart?

 

[waterdrop]

Its possible the mature media itself arrived with a bunch of ammonia (when you disturb tank debris, it often gets acted upon by different, heterotrophic, bacteria and they process some of the debris and produce ammonia. That can happen when you gravel clean or clean filters or move media around.)

If you test again and its too dark, just do about a 55-70% water change, test and recharge again with some ammonia if needed to get yourself back around 4ppm. You are at a very early stage of fishless cycling and strict 5ppm ammonia levels will not be important until the end. Levels of 3ppm or 4ppm will be fine for now, even a little bit better really.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[br3ach]

20/05/09 - 5ppm +

I added media donated to me from tom_os and that had ammonia in it along with hopefully lots of bacteria ready to spread to the sponges I already had in my filter. The ammonia has spiked right up due to the donated sponges being soaked in ammonia. Hopefully it will drop down once the bacteria settle in

 

[br3ach]

New reading taken today

26/05/09

A 0 ppm
Ni 5 ppm
Na 80+ ppm

Can anyone advise me on what I should do next? Looks like the established media I have added has moved things along nicely

 

[br3ach]

I just went back through the tutorial for fishless cycling and figured I needed to top the ammonia back up so I added 3 ppm and will monitor it daily now to see how quickly it drops. Just got to wait for the bacteria to develop for the nitrite now and I am away

 

[waterdrop]

That's right, you're probably in the second phase now, where we see the "nitrite spike" so the next milestone will be when nitrite finally goes down in 24 hours, rather than staying spiked. Then the next milestone is when one or the other can drop in 12 hours and then finally when both ammonia and nitrite can drop to zero within 12 hours. At that point you can start your qualifying week!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[br3ach]

Thanks for the reply again Waterdrop. Nitrite still high again this evening so reloaded ammonia to 5ppm and will wait another 24 hours