elprez19

I have been cycling for almost a month now. I had my tank run for about a week then I added about 8 danios and used stresszyme. I had some amonia and lost a couple danios within the fist couple weeks but never had a big spike. I also vacumed my gravel and did 25 percent water changes since adding fish everyother day. I tested my water yesterday and I had 0 amonia, 0 nitrite, and and tiny bit of nitrate. I went out and got some cory's today and petco told me that my tank is probalby not cycled yet and that I shouldnt do any water changes to that I can buld up the bacteria. I have been reading this forum for a couple weeks and everyone says to do water changes even when cylcing. My fish seem to be healthy and fine. Do you think that my tank is cycled or are my fish in trouble? thanks

capekate

Its hard to say if your tank is cycled yet. Did it ever read a high nitrite? high ammonia?...
Changing water in a cycling tank works when you are cycling with fish. If you are cycling with no fish than you do not need to do the water change til after the tank has cycled and just before adding fish. But if you are cycling with fish, then you have to do the water change to keep the ammonia and nitrates down til the tank cycles for the health of your fish.
Hope that clears it up for you!

~ kate

elprez19

I have a test kit and checked my amonia a couple weeks ago and I had some but it was never really high and I also have a seachem test in the tank that is suposed to change color if it spikes but never did. I can't remember what my nitrite reading was a couple weeks ago. Surley the amonia level should have spike by now with fish and stresszyme right? Ive been cycling for a little over 3 weeks with fish.

0morrokh

There's one of two possibilities...either the ammonia spike occurred almost immediately and had already begun to go down by the time you tested it, or else your water changes have prevented the ammonia from reaching the level where the tank could cycle. What size is the tank? It's good that you're doing water changes, or else the ammonia would build up to the point where it could kill all the fish. You should test the ammonia and nitrite every day and do a water change whenever the ammonia gets over .25/the nitrite gets over .5 (those are just guidelines, be sure to watch the fish for signs of stress).

COBettaCouple

Are you still adding Stresszyme? Often products like that can give you a false idea of where the cycle is by mini-cycling the tank. We had tanks that didn't cycle until after we had stopped using "Cycle" in them. Using "Prime" to treat your tap water will help the fish out as well.

ahcash

CoBettaCouple,

I thought the "Cycle" product is support to help with shorten the fish tank cycle. I could be wrong.

One other question. Didn't mean to hijack the thread. I usually leave the water in the bucket at least 2 days before doing water change. Should I use prime when I fill up the bucket or should I use prime just before the water change.

sgould

Cycle claims to help shorten the tank's cycling time, but many have found those claims to be false.

For a freshwater tank, if you are treating with Prime, there is no need to let your water sit for any length of time before a water change. Just put the prime in the new water, then add the new water to the tank. Main thing is to keep the temperature of the new water as closely matched to the temp of the tank as you can.

elprez19

I have a 30 gallon and the stesszyme is a 1 dose every 7 days for 3 weeks which i have finished. When you cycle are you supposed to do vacuming with the water changes because thats what I have been doing. I know you need to get a bacteria bed to have a cycled tank but does vacuming effect that or should I not continue? My readings are still good, so I don't know. I have 3 cory's in and one of them isn't really active, this being the second day but all of the other fish are good.

sgould

My opinion is to not vacume while the cycle is in progress. Once the cycle is complete, I vacume about half the tank every week when I do my water change.

COBettaCouple

"Cycle" is something we used from when we started fish keeping at the start of last year until we started spending time at FishLore in March and during that time, we just went through a series of mini-cycles. After stopping the use of it, our tanks finally cycled for real.

You could use Prime in tap water. We add it to tap water, then pour that water in right away. The chlorine removal is why people would let water sit, but now there are chloramines and other heavy metals often in the water that won't go away with time but Prime takes care of that and the water is ok to use right away.
With fish in the tank, I would be doing water changes more often than normal (every 2-3 days) and cleaning normal (1x a week). It slows the cycling down but helps the fish more.