ALEXF
Fish Addict
got my fingers crossed too
Oliver's New Tank
- Thread starter waterdrop
- Start date
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Day 87 fishless cycling 
<--he's keeping us company
(beginners's note - don't worry this is non-continuous and includes a couple of large set-backs that can't be considered part of fishless cycling in any way, shape or form!)
The filter is performing in a very regular fashion now. I'm putting in 12 dropper squirts of ammonia to get somewhere close to 4ppm each morning and at the 12 hour mark it only has a tiny bit of nitrite left. Yesterday I did 13 squirts, probably putting it between 5-6ppm, so there was 0.25 ammonia and 0.75 nitrite left at the 12 hour mark.
I have had plenty of decomposing plant leaves, not all of which have been trimmed out, which are undoubtedly adding to the bioload. Some of the plants didn't make it after the episode of being un-anchored for several days and others are finally sprouting some new leaves. I didn't do a good job of documenting my plant purchases, making it harder for me to ask questions over in the planted tank forum. In the future I'll work harder at recording the names. This is far from an attractive tank, but the water sure is clear now!
KH is down to 4, but pH is holding steady at 7.5, cat came in from the rain to get dried off before waking Oliver up.
~~waterdrop~~
<--he's keeping us company(beginners's note - don't worry this is non-continuous and includes a couple of large set-backs that can't be considered part of fishless cycling in any way, shape or form!)
The filter is performing in a very regular fashion now. I'm putting in 12 dropper squirts of ammonia to get somewhere close to 4ppm each morning and at the 12 hour mark it only has a tiny bit of nitrite left. Yesterday I did 13 squirts, probably putting it between 5-6ppm, so there was 0.25 ammonia and 0.75 nitrite left at the 12 hour mark.
I have had plenty of decomposing plant leaves, not all of which have been trimmed out, which are undoubtedly adding to the bioload. Some of the plants didn't make it after the episode of being un-anchored for several days and others are finally sprouting some new leaves. I didn't do a good job of documenting my plant purchases, making it harder for me to ask questions over in the planted tank forum. In the future I'll work harder at recording the names. This is far from an attractive tank, but the water sure is clear now!
KH is down to 4, but pH is holding steady at 7.5, cat came in from the rain to get dried off before waking Oliver up.
~~waterdrop~~
Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
sounds good, you do seem to get a frustrating phase at the end of some cycles where there's just a smidge of nitrite for a couple of weeks. EVENTUALLY it'll go.
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Day 141 Fishless Cycling 
Last day of fishless cycling 
Well, Miss Wiggles is bored today and dying to know, so many of you will recall my saga of fishless cycling Oliver's tank - basically our very soft water caused pH crashes and so the cycle took about 3 months. At that point it was fully cycled and the night after we'd been out and brought in plants, the tank broke, dumping 28G/106L into Oliver's room. Well, we got the replacement tank and I spent 3 months again playing fishless cycling scientist and finally on July 3 I ventured out to the local Petsmart and discovered a better stocking of new fish available than usual, so I decided we should get some of the more common ones and get started.
July 4th is a holiday here and they were closed. That night I sat on a friends front porch and enjoyed a huge thunderstorm complete with high winds and huge bolts of lightning hitting. We were all enjoying our holiday party and thinking this was great fun. But when I got home I found the power out and realized it had been out for possibly quite a while. My hard won (6 months now) bacteria were about to be killed again! So I took the cannister and media to the bathtub and separately filled a bucket with some of my tank water. Every hour or so I emptied the cannister and refilled it with fresh tank water to give the bacteria some oxygen and perhaps a little ammonia (although ammonia was already probably at zero.) That night the power did not come back on and I ended up sleeping for one 5 hour stretch and not refilling the cannister. I thought that would kill it. After about 24 hours we got power back and I set the system back up as normal. Amazingly as I began putting 5ppm ammonia back in and testing the next 2 days, I found that the bacteria were not only alive and well, they were processing ammonia and nitrite even faster than before.
So, the upshot is, we finally did THE BIG WATER CHANGE and went to get fish. We only got 3 zebra danios and 5 Rasbora Heteromorphs, but boy do those 8 fish look wonderful to us. Oliver is so excited. The fish seem like they absolutely love their new environment. They are showing beautiful colors and darting all about, really happy!
So Dad has finally stopped all the ammonia stuff (kind of misses it) and Oliver has already picked out a special zebra he named "Zippy" to keep an eye on. Tank stats are perfect. We are already thinking which tetra shoals will be a little more hardy that we can get sooner while we wait for the tank to mature some more for the corries, angels, neons and things we'll get later.
We are really happy here and TFF has made it wonderful fun. Know you guys will be wanting me to figure out which button on the camera takes the pix.... don't hold your breath, may have to take vacation first!
~~waterdrop~~~
Last day of fishless cycling Well, Miss Wiggles is bored today and dying to know, so many of you will recall my saga of fishless cycling Oliver's tank - basically our very soft water caused pH crashes and so the cycle took about 3 months. At that point it was fully cycled and the night after we'd been out and brought in plants, the tank broke, dumping 28G/106L into Oliver's room. Well, we got the replacement tank and I spent 3 months again playing fishless cycling scientist and finally on July 3 I ventured out to the local Petsmart and discovered a better stocking of new fish available than usual, so I decided we should get some of the more common ones and get started.
July 4th is a holiday here and they were closed. That night I sat on a friends front porch and enjoyed a huge thunderstorm complete with high winds and huge bolts of lightning hitting. We were all enjoying our holiday party and thinking this was great fun. But when I got home I found the power out and realized it had been out for possibly quite a while. My hard won (6 months now) bacteria were about to be killed again! So I took the cannister and media to the bathtub and separately filled a bucket with some of my tank water. Every hour or so I emptied the cannister and refilled it with fresh tank water to give the bacteria some oxygen and perhaps a little ammonia (although ammonia was already probably at zero.) That night the power did not come back on and I ended up sleeping for one 5 hour stretch and not refilling the cannister. I thought that would kill it. After about 24 hours we got power back and I set the system back up as normal. Amazingly as I began putting 5ppm ammonia back in and testing the next 2 days, I found that the bacteria were not only alive and well, they were processing ammonia and nitrite even faster than before.
So, the upshot is, we finally did THE BIG WATER CHANGE and went to get fish. We only got 3 zebra danios and 5 Rasbora Heteromorphs, but boy do those 8 fish look wonderful to us. Oliver is so excited. The fish seem like they absolutely love their new environment. They are showing beautiful colors and darting all about, really happy!
So Dad has finally stopped all the ammonia stuff (kind of misses it) and Oliver has already picked out a special zebra he named "Zippy" to keep an eye on. Tank stats are perfect. We are already thinking which tetra shoals will be a little more hardy that we can get sooner while we wait for the tank to mature some more for the corries, angels, neons and things we'll get later.
We are really happy here and TFF has made it wonderful fun. Know you guys will be wanting me to figure out which button on the camera takes the pix.... don't hold your breath, may have to take vacation first!
~~waterdrop~~~
Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
awesome!!!!!!! you know how sad i am, i'm getting ready to go out partying tonight, wanted to pop on to catch your promised update this evening, looks like i timed it perfectly.
and yes you guessed it, pictures please
really stoked you're pleased with what you've got, and I bet Oliver's over the moon.
So was it worth the wait?
I think you also hold the official TFF record for the longest cycle ever
and yes you guessed it, pictures please
really stoked you're pleased with what you've got, and I bet Oliver's over the moon.
So was it worth the wait?
I think you also hold the official TFF record for the longest cycle ever
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Wonderful you logged on even for a moment and were able to see this!
As you and BTT know, I've always been of two minds about this thread, as its great fun laughing about it with the crew that's been here the last half year but I've never wanted to mislead any beginners into thinking that fishless has to take this long.
(to any of those reading this, even those two 3-month sessions were drawn out longer than they needed to be as I got quite interested in the details of fishless cycling and tried various experiments and generally passed up opportunities to switch in a small population of fish)
An interesting thing that I noticed from a parent's standpoint is how once you finally have fish, it pretty much wipes out the memory of it taking any time. Oliver is all caught up in the fish themselves now and thrilled with them. Interestingly, all the long 6 months of waiting and interacting about the fishless cycling, all of the learning of nitrogen charts is just something he has absorbed and its part of him.
For me its been really fun verifying in real life that all the things we repeat in the "New to the Hobby" forum really can and do work.
Grateful for everyone's support,
~~waterdrop~~
As you and BTT know, I've always been of two minds about this thread, as its great fun laughing about it with the crew that's been here the last half year but I've never wanted to mislead any beginners into thinking that fishless has to take this long.
(to any of those reading this, even those two 3-month sessions were drawn out longer than they needed to be as I got quite interested in the details of fishless cycling and tried various experiments and generally passed up opportunities to switch in a small population of fish)
An interesting thing that I noticed from a parent's standpoint is how once you finally have fish, it pretty much wipes out the memory of it taking any time. Oliver is all caught up in the fish themselves now and thrilled with them. Interestingly, all the long 6 months of waiting and interacting about the fishless cycling, all of the learning of nitrogen charts is just something he has absorbed and its part of him.
For me its been really fun verifying in real life that all the things we repeat in the "New to the Hobby" forum really can and do work.
Grateful for everyone's support,
~~waterdrop~~
Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
Similar threads
Most reactions
-
381 -
214 -
211 -
190 -
180 -
164 -
162 -
129 -
124 -
121 -
105 -
102 -
86 -
75 -
72