Fishless Cycling

[Anthony20]

Zen one more question, I promise lol I added four 4"x 12" media bags with gravel from a mature tank and an established filter, is that fine adding them in there when I'm putting the drops of ammonia in? Or would the high levels of ammonia kill off the bb.

Thanks again for your help, the next time you from me will be when the tanks cycled and saying thanks lol

 

[zennzzo]

Zen one more question, I promise lol I added four 4"x 12" media bags with gravel from a mature tank and an established filter, is that fine adding them in there when I'm putting the drops of ammonia in? Or would the high levels of ammonia kill off the bb.

Thanks again for your help, the next time you from me will be when the tanks cycled and saying thanks lol

no you're fine...

 

[Anthony20]

Hey Zen, is it normal that the Ammonia is dropping in 24 hours to around 0.25 and I have a spike in Nitirites. I know this means the cycle has started, but its happened really fast, maybe in about a week... Cause in the past cycling the tanks the other way it would normally take weeks for the bb to start putting down the ammonia levels. Is it maybe cause of the media bags with gravel from an established tank and the hob filter from another tank?? But as I'm hoping that this cycle is going as you said I've started to only add about 40 drops of ammonia. Thanks again Zen

 

[zennzzo]

Hey Zen, is it normal that the Ammonia is dropping in 24 hours to around 0.25 and I have a spike in Nitirites. I know this means the cycle has started, but its happened really fast, maybe in about a week... Cause in the past cycling the tanks the other way it would normally take weeks for the bb to start putting down the ammonia levels. Is it maybe cause of the media bags with gravel from an established tank and the hob filter from another tank?? But as I'm hoping that this cycle is going as you said I've started to only add about 40 drops of ammonia. Thanks again Zen

Yes, that's about normal for fishless cycling...the high temp lets the BB thrive and there is nothing else consuming O2 etc...
The quickest I seen a tank cycle was my 150 with a new wet/dry and new media. It was chlorine-less tap water to cycled tank
(zero Ammonia/ zero NitrItes/ 40ppm NitrAtes) in 10 days...

 

[Anthony20]

Nice ya, I'm doing this way with a 125G tank and a wet/dry. For now I got an emperor 400 hob on it but plan on putting a AC110 when its done cycling.

Let me ask you one thing I stated in the previous post the ammonia was coming down within 24 hours, I dropped from 60 and added 40 drops of ammonia at around 6:00pm my time and its 10pm now and the ammonia is reading in between 0 and 0.25. What should I do? I usually have been adding the ammonia daily around 6pm. Thanks

 

[zennzzo]

Just add the drops of Ammonia at the same time every day...
To tell you the truth,
I used a glass eye dropper for the drops of ammonia so I knew I had ammonia at a consistent ammount introduced into the water, so I didn't see a need to test for them. I was testing for NitrItes first.

Then, after I got a measurable reading on my NitrItes, I reduced the Ammonia drops to 1/2 the original amount.
Then,
I would just test for NitrAtes...
When they (the NitrAtes) reached 20ppm, thats when I did the tests for all three, ammonia comming up zero first, then a day or two later the NitrItes dropping to zero.

So,
I don't really see a need to test for the Ammonia at first. That is the constant that is manually introduced...

 

[Anthony20]

Oh ok thanks, I'll be testing for NitrAtes then

 

[zennzzo]

Oh ok thanks, I'll be testing for NitrAtes then

at about 20-40ppm you can expect to see Zero and Zero on the Ammonia and NitrItes ...

 

[tcarswell]

Nope nothing to wear out or replace with Ehiem "Ehfisubstrat Pro"

I love that stuff. I got three trays of it in my fluval 405 ...... And my eheim classic came packed with it. Im sure it handles my bio load with absolute ease. Easy water flow through it all in all a great media. Seachem Matrix is another great media much cheaper and has huge huge surface area as well.

 

[Anthony20]

Zen here are my readings, I did a test on amm, nitrI, and nitrA just to see were I was at, and now got a bit further confused lol

Amm- 0 - 0.25
nitrI- super high about 5ppm
nitrA- this is were I got confused now, I thought the NitrA was supposed to be 0 while the nitrI were still spiked. They read between like 50 - 60ppm...

Is it supposed to be reading like this??? Or did something go wrong?

Thanks again Zen.