I'm doing a fishless cycle on my first ever aquarium. I started about a month ago, adding approx. 35 drops of ammonia a day to get the level up to about 5 ppm. Once that amount was dropping to 0 ppm every day and I started seeing the nitrite spike, I cut the amount by about half. The first few days this amount of ammonia was dropping to 0, but the last couple of days (adding about 15 drops) my ammonia reading has gone back up to between .25 and .50 ppm. Is this normal, or is it something I should be worried about? I don't want to get this far into the cycle and have things go haywire!!
Ammonia level during a fishless cycle
- Thread starter TBoneHuffman
- Start date
Something sounds a bit off. Have you been doing any water changes (you shouldn't be)? You should continue adding the same amount of ammonia the whole time the tank is cycling. It is cycled when you can add ammonia in the morning and by the evening both the nitrite and ammonia levels are once again at 0.0.
After reading your response, I had this thought.....Maybe by cutting the amount of ammonia and robbing the bacteria of their food source, I've caused them to die back to a point where they can no longer handle the ammonia, which has caused a slight rise? I'm going back to adding the full 35 drops to see if I can get back to where I was reading 0 ppm every evening, 24 hours after adding the ammonia. Wish me luck!
PS: I haven't done any water changes, only a slight top off of the water level after it started dropping due to evaporation.
PS: I haven't done any water changes, only a slight top off of the water level after it started dropping due to evaporation.
