Cycling problem need some help

fred1985

fred1985

Medium Fish
#1
Sep 24, 2010
71
0
0
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
#1
I set up a 55ga tank back on November 13. I then let it run for two weeks with hob filter air stone and a power head. I started to notice small amounts of ammonia (0.50ppm) and no sign of nitrite/nitrate so I started to add ammonia. Thinking I was on track to cycling my tank. I added about 2 pounds of gravel and filter media from my established tank to seed the new tank(day 1). Thinking that this would help the cycling process I also added an established hob filter(day two of the ammo dump cycle). So then I noticed about 10 days into the ammonia dumping process that there was no change in the ammonia levels and still no sign of nitrite and had a reading of five for nitrate. So thinking I had added to much ammo and from some advice from people on this forum I then preformed a 55% water change. Two days later I preformed another 55% water change and got my ammo reading down to one ppm and three days after that I did another water change. So today I tested my water and I got all zero for ammo, nitrite, and nitrate. So I am wondering is that normal or should the nitrate be like at least five? I am very confused this will be week six with my tank cycling and from what the LFS have told me three weeks and I should be good to go.

Can I get some opinions or some help please?

thanks
 

achase

achase

Large Fish
#3
Feb 1, 2010
765
0
0
British Columbia, Canada
#3
Since you are adding ammonia I'm assuming your doing a fishless cycle. In my signature there is a link on the fishless cycle (which is the article I use to cycle my tanks). Check that out and see if that helps.
 

O

OrangeCones

Elite Fish
#5
Feb 27, 2009
4,395
0
36
#5
Without a constant source of ammonia (either pure ammonia you are adding or fish waste from fish living in the water), the beneficial bacteria will die out in just a couple of days.
 

fred1985

fred1985

Medium Fish
#6
Sep 24, 2010
71
0
0
St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
#6
Yea I thought that and I was adding ammo every day for 10 days. Then I realized that I overdosed the tank with ammo and the nitrite levels where not rising. So then I stopped adding ammo and nothing changed the ammo stayed high and other levels did not rise.
So today I tested water ammo is zero and nitrite is zero and nitrate is five so I went ageist what I set out to do and put in six zebra danio and one SAE and im going to monitor the water levels and the fish.
 

nanu156

nanu156

Large Fish
#7
Mar 8, 2010
745
0
0
Detroit, Mi
#7
ok so everything is at 0 correct?

If it is and it sounds like you have another tank take your filter media and do a cleaning of the filters into some old water, add the NASTY water to your tank, go buy some fish.

start with a light stock but the waste that builds up in your filter is live bacteria. So by adding the live bacteria you are essentially skipping all the steps inbetween. you need fish to keep it alive or it will die, so go get some :)
 

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