Iggy’s Tank Cycle Recipe

[Iggy]

Well, I have a Python water system now, and hopefully a 55 (or bigger) gallon tank for Christmas Change as much water as you can I guess, just don't clean the gravel or ornaments or let them dry out during the water change.

I will take readings and post my results here on my new 55 gallon cycle time to see how long it takes using my recipe.

Hopefully, this thread will not get pushed too far down its unavailable at the time.

 

[Somonas]

K, I got some FAq's from Catfishmike
I don't know where to stick them.
Iggy if you want to do me a favour and redit your first post, or recompile it with updates, whatever, and email to me. I'll pass them onto arcab4. artw666@hotmail.com

Maybe we could get some volunteers to read through the board. or someone can pick a forum, and search through it for useful posts that can become part of the Faq.

 

[Iggy]

I would be happy to read the Betta board to find good FAQ posts (oups)

 

[FroggyFox]

Somonas did you look up that thread that we mostly talked about the FAQ section? There were a LOT of great ideas in there...

 

[dbacksrat]

wow dude. I will be cycling my tank very soon. thanks for the great advice :>)

 

[Lotus]

I have to say, seeding a tank with a cycled filter was the fastest way we found. Our 10g took 3-4 weeks as the filter size was different, so all we could do were filter squeezings. Our new 50g cycled in 2 weeks as we used a filter pad from an existing tank. Otherwise everything else was the same; we used live plants from established tanks and brand new substrate in both.

I think it would be great to see a week by week account of the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings

 

[Iggy]

Hi all!

I updated the thread with comments above. Thanks for all the help. Send me a personal message if you use the recipe with your results and observations.

Cheers!

Ian

Can I cook or can I cook!

 

[Iggy]

It looks like I will be getting a 50 gallon for Christmas, however I will more likely move all my media (gravel and filtration) into this new tank so I am not certain if I will need to re-cycle it again, mostly because I will be moving all the fish over at the same time and it will have the same bio-load as my 38 gallon.

But, that also means I need to re-cycle my 38 once all my media is removed, so I will do a week by week reading and post it somewhere for reference.

 

[Lotus]

Congratulations on getting a new tank

I was reading the cycling article over on cichlid-forum.com the other day, and they said to add half the amount of ammonia daily once the nitrites have spiked. This was the first time I read that. Anyone else do it this way?

 

[Iggy]

Reducing ammonia ppm during a fishless cycle is a false cheat... reducing your ammonia levels at any time during the cycle is reducing your tanks ability to process waste at a high load, which is why your doing it in the first place.

The problem is that people get too impatient during the nitrite (2nd) cycle and want it over with, so they stop or reduce the ammonia, which means the ammonia eating bacteria will have less food to produce less nitrite waste (the bacteria will actually die-off a little), which can be processed easier by the smaller forming nitrite eating bacteria colonies.

The end result is a cycled tank that CANNOT handle 5ppm ammonia waste, so don't fully stock (heaven forbit overstock) your thank if you cheat, just add 1/2 the stock and add more fish slowly.

Take the extra week or so, then you can stock it full of fish. Or use the cheat and stock it 1/2 full and only add more fish after a few weeks. Either way, to fully stock your tank will take those extra weeks anyway if you don't want to stress-out your fishies.

 

[Iggy]

50gal Update

I sucessfully transferred the bio-filtration from my 38gallon to my 50gallon without having to re-do the cycle.

I basically setup my 50 gallon, put the fish in a temporary tank while I moved all (I mean all) the media, including gravel, filter, plants and rocks from the 38 to the 50 tank. I had extra gravel, so I just added the new gravel first, then rinsed out the old gravel (in the old tank water) and moved everything over. I let the filtration run a few minutes to clear-up the haze and then added the same amount of fish back in.

So, buy moving all the media, plus adding some new, and keeping the tank stock the same, you can effectively 'copy' your tank bio-filtration without re-cycling a new tank.

 

[Fisherado]

How much is 1 ppm ??!?

Hi guys,
Where I come from we use grams and litres, so does the ammonia test kits. Could u tell me how many mg/l is there in 1 ppm ?? I'm trying to do the fishless cycle thing but can't add ammonia until I'm sure how much is 5ppm !?!
thanks heaps
Ciao

 

[Lotus]

A ppm is the same as a mg/L.

 

[pieulla]

Okay I have followed all the directions above. I brought my tank to 5 ppm of ammonia. Three days have passed and the levels haven't dropped at all. It has remained the same. Am I still supposed to be adding ammonia or only when the ppm drop below 5 ppm? Please direct me!

 

[FroggyFox]

If you continue adding every day it will take longer before you see them drop. After three days you might or might not see a drop...I wouldn't stress yet If you choose to just get the level to 5ppm and wait for the drop, THEN start adding it every day...that works too.

 

[Flex26]

Just a thought: is it possible you added too much ammonia? You mentioned a "titch" over 5ppm in another thread. Could that mean 8-10 ppm? Not a big deal....just could take a little longer.

 

[Iggy]

Too much ammonia?

OK, just a quick edit for those of you who have experienced dramatically rising ammonia levels.

Adding the same amount of ammonia each day (the same orginal amount it took to get to 5ppm) works, just may take longer for non-seeded tanks. You are basically building up an ammonia 'resistance' level of 5ppm per day.

My observations on people who have ammonia levels rising steadily during this process is either because:

1. They added too much ammonia in the first place. Try to be exact the first time around and use an eyedroper or oral syringe or measuring spoons to make sure your adding a more-or-less exact amount of ammonia each day. It does not take much ammonia to make it jump from 5ppm to 10ppm!

2. Some filtration systems take longer to seed than others. I find sponge filters very effective, and some under gravel filters take longer. I imagine bio-wheel filters should speed up the growth process, but I do not own a bio-wheel system so I cannot be 100% sure.

Again, if you need to speed things up, the following works the best.

a) Seed your tank using sponge squeezings from an established tank. Lots of fish stores will do this for you, where they will squeeze a filter sponge into a bag of tank water you can simply dump into your tank. This seems to really speed-up the nitrite cycle process.

b) Add more filter media with 'surface area', like ceramic discs or fludized bed bio-filters. If at all possible, get the filter media from other healty established tanks, like gravel or floss material.

c) Heat it up! Bring the tank temperature to 84F. Warmer tanks seed faster. No warmer than 85F however, or it will actually slow down the process.

Try to avoid doing the following:

i) Do not add too much ammonia or guessing ammonia levels. It just leads to headaches and huge water changes to adjust the levels.

ii) Do not reduce the amount of ammonia you add to the tank each day. It will reduce your nitrite readings, but it will also reduce your bio-load capacilty.

iii) Don't test every day. Once a week at the start should be fine, unless you accidentally drop too much ammonia in the tank or something, just space-out testing a week at a time.

iv) Avoid using filter media that you have to replace or remove once complete. Once you remove the media, you loose its biological capacilty. Try to use dedicated bio-filtrater media, like ceramic discs, fluidized bed bio-filters, gravel, sponge only filters. I don't particularly like the combination fitler/carbon fitlers (ie: Whisper), because of the fact you have to remove them once a month and re-build that biofilter capacilty. If you do have these types of fitlers, try using 2 or staggering the replacement of filters.

Keep up the faith & thanks for all the positive feedback

 

[FroggyFox]

Re: Too much ammonia?

Originally posted by Iggy
Try to avoid doing the following:

ii) Do not reduce the amount of ammonia you add to the tank each day. It will reduce your nitrite readings, but it will also reduce your bio-load capacilty.

Hey Iggy...are we going to agree to disagree on this point...or maybe it deserves some clarification?

When you start out with a tank...completely unseeded...you want to get the ammonia level up to 5ppm and take note of the amount that took to get it to that point.

If you go the next day and add that same amount of ammonia...your ammonia level will be 10ppm.

I would suggest measuring the ammonia level every couple of days...and when you notice it start going down...add a little bit to get it back to 5ppm...then a little more until you can use that amount that originally got the tank to 5ppm. Once you get to that point...you should add that same amount every day...no matter what the nitrite readings are...and you dont have to test for ammonia because you know that that part of the cycle is finished and as soon as you stop adding ammonia your ammonia level will be at 0ppm.

 

[Iggy]

FroggyFox, I follow your logic, and I think it makes sense, but may be confusing to newbies.

Basically, you are suggesting to initially bring the ammonia concentration level to 5ppm, then only adding enough ammonia for the next few days to maintain the level of 5ppm until the ammonia processing cycle is able to totally process the daily amount of ammonia added, up to the orginal limit.

I think that would work also, but it would requires more daily testing for the first week or so.

My cycles with the orginal recipe (full ammonia concentration each day), has cycled tanks fairly quickly, and in all cases, no cycle has taken longer than 4.5 weeks.

In all fairness, however, I did use a combination of seeding methods to speed-up the cycle time, so perhaps my seeding the tank assisted the ammonia cycle bacteria, and it was able to handle the higher levels of ammonia than a brand-new, sanitized tank.

If anyone wants to follow Froggy's method, I believe it would work just as well. Just monitor your ammonia levels each day before and after you add the lower amounts of ammonia so you keep it at 5pmm fhe first week or so. It will not take long for your biological filtration capacity to process the full dosage of ammonia.

But remember, the cycle is only half-done once your ammonia tests hit 0ppm... the Nitrite cycle still has to finish so don't add fish till the Nitrites read 0pmm and you do a large water change!

Happy cycling

 

[JWright]

Building up a huge concentration of ammonia will stagnate the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. You've gotten around this by seeding well, so the ammonia level starts to fall right away. In a fresh, unseeded tank, you could easily see ammonia concentrations in excess of 50ppm, which would dramatically reduce the viability of the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria.