slizard

My 8th day into fish free cycling using ammonia. Ammonia still at >4ppm

But Nitrites now at .25ppm

Water temp at about 90

How long do you think until it's fish ready?

Peterpiper

Only about 3 weeks or 504hrs. I know it can be painfull waiting.
But by doing it this way you know you wont have any issues with ammonia or nitrites once you put your fish in. And you didnt make any fish suffer! hang in there.
Using the ammonia method is the fastest and cleanest way to cycle your tank.

Lucy

Hi slizard,
Welcome to FishLore.

Petepiper is right. You're cycling your tank the humane way.

All you have to do is read some of the threads where people have unknowingly started their cycle with fish to see that.

Keep up the good work, your patience will pay off.

Oh........ I just read your aquarium info. Is this the same tank or are you starting a new one?
If this is a new tank, you can use decoration, some gravel or cut a peice of filter media from your established tank and put it in the new one. This will help seed the bacteria and move things along faster.

Good luck.

Shawnie

GREAT JOB cycleing fishless!! I so know how long and how many patience it takes....I didnt know about it and did it with fish and lordy me!! soooo much more work and plenty of fish died ...as lucy said, your tank info in your profile says you have had it for a year, grab some things out of it and put it in the new tank..it will make things go way faster!!goodluck!

slizard

It is a new tank. I am moving from a 10gal to a 20gal. I had a Beta in the 10gal who died of dropsy. I am pretty sure he had issues already when I purchased him. Because of this I wanted to make a fresh start and not risk moving anything over from the old tank. But my logic is probably flawed because I am moving my fish over! So what do you think, should I seed it, or just wait it out?

Part of waiting it out would perhaps benefit me in having the experience of going through a full cycling. Plus, my I am kind of friends with the local fish store owner. Yesterday I was down there and picked up a multi-test kit (previously having only ammonia). I asked him if he knew about fishless cycling with ammonia and he had never heard of it! So I would like to educate him about it. He is a good guy and I would like to think he would pass that info along to his customers. I am going to print out the article from richard7467 about it.

Thanks everyone,

Fish are fun. I have some pics I took last night of my fish I will try and post soon. I got a couple of my elusive Pleco and loach that I am pleased with.

Late 4 work...

Lucy

I'm impatient, so I'd seed it.

On the other hand, if you want to help educate your friend, it might be best to have first hand knowledge. It will be nice if he was receptive to it and maybe start to carry pure ammonia in his store.

Whichever you choose, good luck.

susitna-flower

If you really want to pass TONS of good information, without always having to just tell them, tell folks about fishlore! Then they can research the things themselves.....

I've been doing this and hope to make better fish friends right here near home, as well as the great folks I've already built friendships with here! Fish people are the best!

Keep up the good work, and I wouldn't worry about using some filter media from the old tank to seed the new one...Remember even when the nitrite starts coming up to continue feeding the tank ammonia....otherwise the bacteria that eats the ammonia will starve, and your cycle isn't complete... It will get to where within a couple of hours of adding ammonia, it will drop back to 0 and the other readings go up...It is so COOL to really see the cycle in action!

slizard

Yeah, It was really cool to see the nitrite reading... Something's happening!!!

Sure, I will turn him on to Fishlore and suggest the Ammonia.

I wanted to make sure what I am using is ok,
The bottle states:
Ammonia Clear
Ingredients: Ammonium Hydroxide and Surfactant

Thanks people!

andy65

UMMMM. When you shake the bottle does if foam?! If it does STOP using it. I am going to bet it will as it has Surfactants in it. Those WILL kill your fish.

Go to a Ace hardware and buy a bottle of there Ammonia.

But other than that GREAT job going fishless. Just wait it out,its worth the time.

slizard

No, I shook the heck out of it and it didn't foam in the least bit. So far I only put in ammonia once eight days ago, two level teaspoons to get it to 6ppm. I'll stop using that and get some from ace. Ahhhrrrr. I just re-read the article and saw that. Do you think I need to start over? Seriously, it did not foam.

Call me Sherlock, what a dummy.

Peterpiper

Did you add live bacteria to help start the cycle?

slizard

No I haven't added bacteria yet. I guess I should. I will probably do that tomorrow or Saturday. I will take a small bio filter element from the old tank and place it inside my new filter in addition to the existing element to seed it.

I suppose that when I do the 90% water change at the end of my cycle that doing so would dilute the suficiants sufficiently to where they wouldn't be an issue. It seems like it would stand to reason that if the water was toxic that bacteria would not grow either.