cowmingo

Hi everyone. Hope you can help us. I've been lurking in these forums for a while and you guys have lots of info, it's pretty awesome.

We are in the process of cycling our second tank. The first one with cycled with fish and this time we're trying to cycle fishless. We have a 33g tank that has been up for about two weeks. We've been feeding it with fish food as pure ammonia has been completely hard to find and we have some gravel from the established tank in there. Currently we're seeing ammonia levels of 1.0 but nothing else is popping up. Do I just need to be patient? Should I get some of the food out of there? We're completely frustrated and really wanting some new fish as we lost two due to ICH in the older 10g tank. Any advice or help that you can give us would be great. We're almost to the point where we just want to be new fish in there and be done with it but that's really just wanting new fish to play with and it wouldn't be fair to them.

Thanks in advance.

sgould

Sounds like you are doing great. As you said, patience is what is needed now. You have a nice ammonia reading, and with time that will spark the nitrite phase of the cycle. Total time to cycle could be 4-6 weeks on average, though some have taken even longer.

poppet

This is the worst time for a fish lover, the waiting to put new fish in, but yes patience is the key. It is very hard not to, but the end results are worth it, happy healthy fish, with no sudden deaths as you have a healhy tank. Good luck.