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Si's Fishless Cycle

Neither did I! Day 63 I'm on now :(

#41#### water... I was thinking about that 0 and i've noticed a few times (in my own and others experience) that if you leave it longer to dose ammonia, the bacteria seem to go through it quicker but it only seems to be a temporary effect... So when you got that 0 it went back to its old ways as soon as you went back to normal dosing.

I still haven't done a fishless cycle and probably never will now I have 3 matured filters running... I initially did a fish-in with danios (none died with regular water changes)

It must be extreeeeemly frustrating for you guys, I am still waiting eagerly to see a progressing tank journal PDSimon!

It is :sad: What happened to the danios?

I will start a journal alongside yours as soon as things get going :nod:

Still not in my qualifation week though...

I never thought i'd go over 60 days!
Hang on in there !!! You're so nearly there !!!

Cheers for the support :good:
 
I actually find the sooner you add it the fast it processes.
 
Nah I've found what Simon has. Both times (recently) that I've left it later to dose (like 5-6 hours later) it's given me a better result 12 hours later.
 
What happened to the danios?


They're in my friends tank having babies far too much, and providing egg based food for other cichlids :)

They are extremely hardy fish and I never had a problem with them one bit throughout everything


On the matter of a fish-in/fish-less cycle I sometimes wonder that although using pure ammonia dosing (fish-less cycle) covers off the nitrogen cycle, what else unmonitored isn't catered for until fish are actually added? The waste products of fish are not pure ammonia, there are no doubt other chemicals created by the fish and bacteria created for the processing of them, which have a lesser affect to livestock but still need catering for. For the sake of the many I still think putting a few small hardy fish through a fish-in cycle is the best for the tank chemistry and future fish you want, especially if the first "instalment" are not so hardy. This only needs doing once at the beginning of starting up the hobby, after that maturing pads for nerw filters in existing tanks is the way to go in my opinion, then if a mini-cycle crops up do twice daily water changes for a few days and your done.
I am sure most people don't agree with me and will argue fish cruelty all the way, but I think subjecting some hardy fish to a cycle to have a perfect environment for more is better than having a pure nitrogen cycle handling tank which might not cater for any other unknown chemical processes which we are unaware of that could still affect new "guests".
 
Yeah... waterchanges would be easy but it just so happens if I like a fish it isn't hardy at all... :p

Its not just bacteria you're creating either its all sorts of microscopic life I guess
 
Yeah... waterchanges would be easy but it just so happens if I like a fish it isn't hardy at all... :p

Its not just bacteria you're creating either its all sorts of microscopic life I guess

Yeah, I get your point, not useful if all your fish you want can't take a fish-in cycle :)

Anyways, this time next week you'll be in "steady state" fingers crossed

 
I think the way forward is to fishless cycle............but then to NOT totally stock your tank. Get some of your fish (the hardier ones) and let them "do the rest" before you fully stock and get the more senstive ones.
 
I think the way forward is to fishless cycle............but then to NOT totally stock your tank. Get some of your fish (the hardier ones) and let them "do the rest" before you fully stock and get the more senstive ones.

That's an awful lot of hassle...it's definitely best for the fish though
 
I think the way forward is to fishless cycle............but then to NOT totally stock your tank. Get some of your fish (the hardier ones) and let them "do the rest" before you fully stock and get the more senstive ones.

That's an awful lot of hassle...it's definitely best for the fish though

What does fish poop give off? Before the fish poop is broken down into ammonia from bacteria? Do we know if its poisonous? Do we also know if it takes a long time for it to happen?
 
Yeah but I'd have found the daily water changes that come with fish-in cycling much more of a hassle. The fishless cycle I think is more of a patience tryer than hard work :( .

Simon I can so see you and me ending up getting our fish the same day!
 
I think the way forward is to fishless cycle............but then to NOT totally stock your tank. Get some of your fish (the hardier ones) and let them "do the rest" before you fully stock and get the more senstive ones.

That's an awful lot of hassle...it's definitely best for the fish though

What does fish poop give off? Before the fish poop is broken down into ammonia from bacteria? Do we know if its poisonous? Do we also know if it takes a long time for it to happen?
Yeah, this is interesting. The fish waste is not all that different than the fish food (or plant debris for that matter, or dead fish.) Its organic tissue matter in all its complexity. Take the 17 nutrients that plants need its going to be some similar graph where each element is seen in some frequency. Obviously there are lots of carbons, hydrogens, oxygens... sulfer, calcium, magnesium and so on all the way down to the trace metals. Often a trace metal will sit somewhere in the middle of a large complex protein and help it to be an enzyme (think of iron being the "hinge" in the middle of a hemoglobin construct, that sort of thing.) Anyway, all these elements have previously been used by living cells (plants or animals alike) to construct cells and then tissues of cells and now, divorced of their sustaining systems, as dying fish or already dead fish or plants (fishfood) they are slowly breaking apart and being deconstructed by mechanical or physical means. The multitudes of heterotrophic bacteria help this process along, with ammonia being a very prominent result.

I think some of the original guys on usenet who discussed the fishless cycling idea were biochemists or others familiar with bioscience topics and I don't think anyone ever tried to imply that the nitrogen cycle and its components, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, were the only thing going on in a tank. Its just that its the "critial pathway," if you will, its the slowest and most key component to "bootstrapping" a set of bio-environmental processes that need to be there for higher-order animals like fish to make a go of it. So, for example, the heterotrophic colonies of bacteria that are present in the water column are really just as necessary as the autotrophs we have in the filter, BUT, they are EASY! They can bloom in a matter of hours if the conditions are right. Its the slow autotrophs that are really the limiting factor and thus the focus of the process.

By the way, I don't have anything against fish-in cycling in the larger technical context. When done by an experienced aquarist with the proper low number of fish and sufficiently large and frequent water changes, the gill and nerve damage risk is low. The real problem with fish-in cycling usually comes with beginners having insufficient information or, as is true for experienced people too, simple mistakes or unavoidable errors (person stranded away from their house and ammonia level rises, etc.) Clearly the most compelling thing about fishless cycling is that it just neatly -removes- the chance of harming the fish (and of course one of the big problems with fish damage is that at milder levels there are simply no symptoms.)

I actually got on here to check on Si's progress. Si, did you switch over to just reporting 12-hour results at some point? When I see a set of results, another piece of info I'm always looking for is whether it represented the 24 or 12 hour result. I saw that a few specific days were mentioned as 12 hour. And I saw that you are back up to dosing 5ppm. It looks like you've only rarely been able to get to pH up in the 8.0 range then? And I assume you're doing a few more of the occasional "reset" type large water changes with recharge of ammonia and bicarb?

Even after several years of this I still find it a head-shaking thing wondering why some cycles seem to so readily finish in a month or so and others want to take 2 months or more. It just begs for some other major factor still undiscovered. Sometimes I think the largest set of variables that none of us really wants to take on is the filter itself and all the media choices. We know that a very wide range of surface types and of fitler designs can work just fine ultimately, but we really don't know if some designs would be much better for quick bacterial growth promotion while others would present factors that blocked growth, who knows?

Anyway, it sounds like Si's bacteria are processing about 5ppm of ammonia and 13ppm of nitrite in 12 hours and leaving only about 0.50ppm on average nitrite left over. The crossover point where a large number of those N-Bacs do one more successful division has to be out there at some day not too far in the future. I always try to remember that this "processing test" is just a surrogate for us to judge the colonies being at a certain level of robustness that won't mini-cycle no matter what sort of first stocking is thrown at it. Seems to me, on all the fishless cycles longer than 50 days or so, the cases where someone has -not- waited it out to double-zeros have -still- been successful after the big water change. Maybe I'm not remembering a few bad cases, but seems like the failures were shorter 30 day type affairs. That's not to say that 12H 00 Qweek is not still the gold standard.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Yeah sorry WD, not the clearest layout but if you look carefully, I test and add ammonia at night usually around 10.30pm/22.30, then test it in the morning for the 12 hour test. The 12 hour testing hasn't been very consistant because I either get up early to work or I get up late because I love sleeping :lol:

Either way, I can tell that my tank hasn't cycled all the nitrites as today, I tested an hour late and it was still 0.25. A good few weeks I've been waiting for these nitrites to cycle 5ppm(well 13.7 nitrites) now. I have done a few waterchanges, i did a 75% WC the other day actually I just forgotten to put it down. Its a bit difficult to get pH over 8, it hovers just below generally...

It's interesting that you say fishless cycles over 50 days, people even not getting double 0's have stocked and its been ok? It wouldn't surprise me if I did that as my stocking will only be about 50%. With plants and 5ppm of ammonia being well over what my stock would produce would it be wrong to finish 'early'?

edit: rather than reading my test results, basically, ammonia is processing really well. Nitrites are hovering around 0.something (have been for a few weeks) even with big waterchanges and an average pH of 7.8
 
I will also finish my table off once the cycle is over, too much hassle going back an updating it constantly. We've done 12 hour tests since day one so you will really be able to see the changes. I've also recorded at which point we changed dosage the water changes how much etc and when we added Bi carb. Should be information packed, something Waterdrop may be interested in seeing.

Thankfully this is the 2nd day of 0.0s... Although this did happen before some weeks ago.
 

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