2nd week of fishless cycle with no change

[fishlover25]

So I started my fishless cycle exactly two weeks ago. I have a 29g tank with a Penguin 330 filter. The temperature is reading 81F and I have an airpump to oxygenate the water. I added pure ammonia and brought it to 4.0 ppm. Since then I have not seen a drop in ammonia. I did a test of nitirites just for kicks but that reads 0ppm.

I made a search and saw that people did a 30% water change and then added ammonia again to bring the levels back up to 4.0 ppm and that seemed to help after a week. I also saw that some people added a frozen shrimp in the tank and that that also helped.

What should I do? Should I do a water change, do the shrimp thing, or just keep waiting?

 

[FreshyFresh]

I too fishless cycled my 29gal with household ammonia because I had no access to established media, etc.

I would crank your heat up to the mid-high 80F and wait for nitrites. It took me ~37 days to fishless cycle my 29. I also dosed ammonia up to ~4ppm and this lead to problems for me once nitrites started. Nitrites spiked SO high, that they went off range on my API kit. You'll know this if your nitrite test tube instantly turns purple, then fades to a 0ppm blue within the 5 min wait time. That = off the charts nitrites. Off the charts nitrites stalled the production of nitrates for me. It took several 50-75% water changes to bring nitrites back down to a readable level when that happened to me. Once I got nitrites down, nitrates began climbing within a day or so.

Same scenario happened as I cycled my 10gal as well.

If you can get ahold of some established bio media from a filter, or some well-used gravel, definitely do so and lower your ppm's of ammonia. Things will move along faster for you.

 

[exhumed07]

37 days to fishless cycle? holy crap! i would never be able to wait that long having an empty tank. i've always done a fish in cycle.

 

[fishlover25]

Unfortunately I do not have access to anyone that could give me something from their established tank. I guess I will keep waiting

 

[FreshyFresh]

Unfortunately I do not have access to anyone that could give me something from their established tank. I guess I will keep waiting

I was in the same boat. I didn't particularly trust the LFS I was working with at the time (but I didn't ask either )

If I ever had to start from scratch again, I would DEFINITELY ask any LFS.

Things may go perfectly for you, but fishless cycling by using household ammonia was quite the project for me. It didn't go "textbook" at all for me. However, at the conclusion, I was able to fully stock my tanks and maintain zero ammonia and zero nitrites.

Joel

 

[FreshyFresh]

37 days to fishless cycle? holy crap! i would never be able to wait that long having an empty tank. i've always done a fish in cycle.

I hear you. The first few weeks were kind of fun, like a little science experiment going on, but then it got old when I had the out of control nitrites.

The positive thing from it was, I had such a strong colony of BB established, I was able to fully stock all at once and never see an ammonia or nitrite spike.

Doing just a fish-in with no established media is still going to take a long time before you can fully stock.

 

[Thyra]

FF, you are the first person I know on this forum that actually did the fishless cycle with pure ammonia. As you know, when I PM'd you I had a different approach due to the fact I could not find ammonia that I trusted to be pure. With a fish in cycle the trick is to test carefully everyday, but I also changed at least 30% of the water daily even when ammonia and nitrite were zero. You and FD weren't around when I inherited the 30g from my daughter or I should say Grandkids when they left for college. It had two palm sized angels that they had for those 9 years. I was really nervous about taking it for several reasons - #1 Except for scraping algae and adding water, the undergravel filter hadn't been moved in those nine years. and #2 I have well water and they had city water which they never dechlorinated. They lived about 30 miles away and my daughter was moving and it was winter. Her husband just brought the fish and tank quite suddenly one afternoon with the fish in a tub with very little water. I needed help setting up, but he didn't have a lot of time and so there was no "acclimation" we just filled the tank and poured the fish in. That was two years ago - the fish have done just fine. I now kind of regret not keeping the undergravel filter. After nine years I had though it would be a really bad mess under there, but there wasn't much and it didn't smell bad either her husband said.

 

[exhumed07]

i've always wondered about the undergravel filters. wondered how do u clean it? then i found out u just gravel vac to clean it. and i don't like to do a gravel vac lol

 

[FreshyFresh]

FF, you are the first person I know on this forum that actually did the fishless cycle with pure ammonia. As you know, when I PM'd you I had a different approach due to the fact I could not find ammonia that I trusted to be pure.

I was about ready to give the whole thing up at that point too!

I know back around ~1979-88 when I had a 10g and then a 20g long, I ran UGF's on them along with small HOBs. Never had water clarity issues or smell, but I knew nothing about proper cycling or regular water changes. I don't recall ever loosing a fish initially, but they didn't last a long time.

I'm thinking a in a well established tank with a good functioning UGF, the UGF works like a good household septic system. BB digests and breaks down the solid, organic waste. The key being to do regular water changes to remove the byproducts.

 

[fishlover25]

I am still not seeing anything! It's been a week and a half since the last post on this thread and still no drop in ammonia. What am I supposed to do? Please help

 

[Rotaripsnoc]

Have you seen the take become cloudy at all ? FF said it took him 37 days, if the post was started 2 weeks in, and it's been a week and a half, that's 24 days. I don't know a lot about smaller tanks, cycle time vs larger, however here is the chart for my 60 gal.

http://goo.gl/PT3aG

I did not use pure ammonia, I fed the tank 3 times a day, breaking flakes into very small particles, and let them sit on the bottom of the tank with the filter running at 25% of it's max. rate. After 2 weeks there was a bacteria bloom ( very cloudy water, bottom half of the tank )

 

[FreshyFresh]

I am still not seeing anything! It's been a week and a half since the last post on this thread and still no drop in ammonia. What am I supposed to do? Please help

I know it's tough, but be patient. It's going to happen. What are your current ammonia readings? What are you maintaining your water temps at? Do you have a decent amount of hardscape in the tank: Gravel, decor, etc? You need that surface area in there. Keep that water temp WARM, like 86-90degF.

 

[fishlover25]

Tank has clear water, not crystal clear but that is how it has been since day one. I am keeping my temperature at 81-82. Ammonia reading is somewhere between 4-8ppm according to API tests but more towards the 4ppm which is where I have had it from day one. As far as hardscape, this is what my tank looks like https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulpvi07pgewd6xg/2013-03-23 16.47.46.jpg

There is about an inch of gravel I would say, a very porous fake drift wood, and two rock formations. The rest is plastic plants.

I guess I'll add some flakes. Cant hurt it anyway

 

[FreshyFresh]

Add fish food at this point? WHY???

If you think your ammonia is higher than 4ppm, that's way too much. Too much will stall the cycle. I'd do a 50% water change (at a minimum) and retest.

I'd turn the heat up too, but I've mentioned that atleast twice to you already.

 

[fishlover25]

FF, I'll increase the temperature. I had forgotten about it the previous time you told me. The reason i cannot tell between 4 and 8 is that the colors are so close to each other that it is hard to tell but I guess better to do a water change and add ammonia if it gets too low then have it stalling.

 

[FreshyFresh]

I hear you.

I hit the same brick wall(s) when fishless cycling by using house-hold ammonia. Get your API ammonia readings down to 1-2ppm and things will progress much more normally.

I too followed the 4ppm recommendations you see and I couldn't get it to work that high. Keep ammo 1-2ppm until nitrites show up, then dose almost nothing until nitrates show up.

 

[fishlover25]

So once Nitirites show up, stop feeding it ammonia?

 

[FreshyFresh]

When cycling my 29 and 10g's with this method, I found that I if I continued to maintain 1-2ppm ammonia with high nitrites, my nitrites would go off the charts high. When this happened, my cycle stalled and nitrates wouldn't budge. I had to do several ~70% water changes to bring nitrites down to a readable level. One that happened, nitrates shot right up within a day.

My suggestion to you would be to try to maintain 0.25ppm ammonia or so.

 

[fishlover25]

I have nitrites! But I am afraid that I might have killed some of the bacteria because my ammonia was at 0. Now that I have nitrites that are about 5ppm, how often should I expect to be getting my ammonia down to 0 if I bring it up to 2ppm?

 

[FreshyFresh]

Just to recap, you've been fishless cycling your 29gal by adding household ammonia since around Feb 15.

You're basically ~10 weeks into it? Man that's a long time. I have read of people taking 2 months or so, but usually it happens a bit quicker.

I commend you for your patience. 5ppm nitrites is a start, but they should shoot right off the chart if you dose more ammonia. I would dose ammonia to 1-2 ppm. It should disappear within a half a day or so and convert to nitrites. Your nitrites obviously would then be higher. If your nitrite to nitrate phase stalls, do several large water changes and then lightly does ammonia (~1-2ppm) and see if it all disappears within hours. Check your nitrites at that point to see if they're zero. Then measure for your nitrates. 0,0 and something = you're good to go.