Si's Fishless Cycle

[Ryefish]

I think the majority of people do the 'add and wait' and only top the ammonia up once it hits 0 reading, no matter how many days it takes.

 

[Dan-CR4]

i did the add and wait method and it took about 6 days for the ammonia to start being processed in 12 hours and nitrite started showing up around the 5th day. you can see my on going cycle by clicking on the link in my signature, im still cycling and on day 26, and it looks like i am getting to the final stage at the moment where my nitrites are dropping within 24 hours to 0. Just waiting for my nitrite to drop within 12 hours then i can do my qualifying week. I can only say the add and wait method has worked for me so far.

Waterdrop and oldman47 have watched and helped me along the way and gave some real good advice to me.

 

[PDSimon]

I must admit, this is quite confusing and I still have no ammonia in my tank

Are you advising a 3ppm add daily or add and wait method?

You're not the only one left a little confused, because of the various methods being talked about it's hard for me to get a grip on what the suggested way forward is. Here's my stab at the best solution discussed.

The regime would be dosing once every 24 hours regardless of when ammonia levels zero off, initially starting with a full 5ppm dose, then daily top ups after that to bring up the ammonia to 5ppm until you get to the Nitrite spike (phase 1 complete). Once you are at that point then to drop daily doses to 3ppm with daily top ups until you have a zero Nitrite reading (phase 2 complete). Then back up to 5ppm ensuring you get daily zero readings for both ammonia and nitrites for a week (phase 3 complete). I could have totally got that wrong though...

Thanks kaivalgi

I shall see what water drop says and go ahead. No huge rush

i did the add and wait method and it took about 6 days for the ammonia to start being processed in 12 hours and nitrite started showing up around the 5th day. you can see my on going cycle by clicking on the link in my signature, im still cycling and on day 26, and it looks like i am getting to the final stage at the moment where my nitrites are dropping within 24 hours to 0. Just waiting for my nitrite to drop within 12 hours then i can do my qualifying week. I can only say the add and wait method has worked for me so far.

Waterdrop and oldman47 have watched and helped me along the way and gave some real good advice to me.

thats good to know

thanks everyone

 

[waterdrop]

I must admit, this is quite confusing and I still have no ammonia in my tank

Are you advising a 3ppm add daily or add and wait method?

You're not the only one left a little confused, because of the various methods being talked about it's hard for me to get a grip on what the suggested way forward is. Here's my stab at the best solution discussed.

The regime would be dosing once every 24 hours regardless of when ammonia levels zero off, initially starting with a full 5ppm dose, then daily top ups after that to bring up the ammonia to 5ppm until you get to the Nitrite spike (phase 1 complete). Once you are at that point then to drop daily doses to 3ppm with daily top ups until you have a zero Nitrite reading (phase 2 complete). Then back up to 5ppm ensuring you get daily zero readings for both ammonia and nitrites for a week (phase 3 complete). I could have totally got that wrong though...

OK, sorry to help get so many confused here, but no big deal, we should be able to clear this up. Ryefish and Dan-CR4 have got it right there. A little bit of the confusion may be divided between three things: Add Daily method vs. Add and Wait method. (I and most of our beginners here are nearly -always- talking about Add and Wait method), discussing of "adding daily" when what we're talking about is really "the need to add because it has dropped to zero ppm daily" (!), and finally, the 5ppm, 3ppm, 5ppm thing.

(really unfortunate I need to make this quick guys, will also check back later) So, yes, use the Add & Wait method, which means you never add ammonia until the previously added ammonia has dropped to zero ppm via testing with your liquid ammonia test. (Sometimes people let it sit for days not sure if its some tiny trace or true zero and if that's the case they should just top up, that's just a reading error.)

In the Add&Wait method you of course will start your fishless cycle with your very first addition of ammonia to the tank. Unless you have mature media, this will result one day later in... Nothing! And the next day probably... Nothing! The ammonia usually DOES NOT go down for days or weeks after that first ammonia addition. So Twinklecaz is experiencing that and its totally normal. There aren't enough "A-Bacs" to eat a significant amount of the ammonia yet. Eventually they will and it will drop and when it does it will probably quickly transition (in most cases at least) to dropping to zero ppm each day! That's why you hear us mention adding ammonia daily so much (not because you automatically add it each day!)

OK, about the ppm amounts of ammonia to add: This is really not a big deal! For the vast majority of the cycle is simply does not matter that much, 3ppm, 4ppm, 5ppm are all going to be basically ok. Especially at the beginning phase, doesn't matter much! I just like to "tweek" things and be picky so I say 5ppm at the beginning, 3ppm during the nitrite spike and definately 5ppm again for the finish.

All of those amount things are just subtleties. The only major thing about that that we like to advise is to try to stay below 8ppm, which most of you have heard. There's concern that 8ppm will encourage the wrong species of autotrophic bacteria and give you a rather lengthy setback from that happening. Basically hovering around 4ppm the whole way gets you close to what many of our fishless cyclers have had plenty of success with!

OK, I'll check from home later and see if anyone has questions from that ----WD----

 

[PDSimon]

I'm going to put 5ppm in the tank then

Test once a day until it goes to 0?

I could possibly get mature media not but sure when so its probbably best just getting on with the cycle now.

I'm going to add the equivalent of 5ppm to my tank in ml. Check original post for info.

 

[PDSimon]

What an unpleasant experience. Ammonia stinks! and the synringe things to help you get it out of the bottle are awful too! So it went everywhere was easy to get it straight out of the bottle. Will be much easier to do next time.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes Si, as much as we yak on here there's often still some detail to actually getting it accomplished in ones own home and tank that makes it a little different or takes some working out! I find that to be true with all sorts of aspects of "tank keeping" so I always try to force myself to slow down quite a bit on the first time of some new thing, especially if I'm working in or near the tank.

WD

 

[PDSimon]

Yes Si, as much as we yak on here there's often still some detail to actually getting it accomplished in ones own home and tank that makes it a little different or takes some working out! I find that to be true with all sorts of aspects of "tank keeping" so I always try to force myself to slow down quite a bit on the first time of some new thing, especially if I'm working in or near the tank.

WD

I did it in the kitchen thank god! I've put 5ppm in now so shall I test it tomorrow (well its 1.51am here so today..), does it matter when?

 

[waterdrop]

Are you UK, making it extremely late night? If its your first time adding ammonia it can be of interest to test it about 20 minutes later (to allow better mixing) just to see if you've really obtained the right amount.

Just about everything is pretty loose in the beginning of a fishless cycle. We like to get beginners established doing their testing at regular hours but that's mostly so that looking at a sequence of results will make more sense later and to get them in the habit for later when regular hours will matter more.

Personally, I was too curious and was quite happy to test and log more frequently than was really needed. I also was quite curious to do a fishless cycle without mature media because in the back of my mind I admitted to myself that I had a shadow of doubt whether my tap water might really have these "invisible" particular bacteria and whether these rather nutty sounding web forum people were really telling me the truth.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[PDSimon]

Are you UK, making it extremely late night? If its your first time adding ammonia it can be of interest to test it about 20 minutes later (to allow better mixing) just to see if you've really obtained the right amount.

Just about everything is pretty loose in the beginning of a fishless cycle. We like to get beginners established doing their testing at regular hours but that's mostly so that looking at a sequence of results will make more sense later and to get them in the habit for later when regular hours will matter more.

Personally, I was too curious and was quite happy to test and log more frequently than was really needed. I also was quite curious to do a fishless cycle without mature media because in the back of my mind I admitted to myself that I had a shadow of doubt whether my tap water might really have these "invisible" particular bacteria and whether these rather nutty sounding web forum people were really telling me the truth.

~~waterdrop~~

I will test it now! and yes its late

do i just dip the test tube in then

That last bit sounds a bit crazy

 

[Dan-CR4]

What test kit are you using? is it a liquid test kit like the api master test kit?

 

[PDSimon]

What test kit are you using? is it a liquid test kit like the api master test kit?

yep.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I used to just dip it and pour out just enough to get the test water down to the test line, got pretty good at it... but eventually I just got an extra syringe that I only used for tank water and that makes it a lot easier to quickly fill the test tubes to the fill line. WD

 

[PDSimon]

4ppm on test kit. next number is 8 so due to my lack of experience its probably pretty much spot on

 

[PDSimon]

original post updated.