I am fishless cycling a 33 gallon tank. I started last Sunday. I added ammonia right away but maybe should have waited I have at least 1ppm ammonia in my tap water. Tonight when I tested the ammonia was very dark green. I then split it 50/50 with tap water (yeah I know, not the most accurate) and I'm still about 8ppm on the test I have misplaced all of my testing charts so I'm going by memory but I know these are too dark to be less than 8. Is this going to stall the cycle or should I keep adding stability and wait for it to process?
That’s really high ammonia and may stall the cycle. How much ammonia did you add? I hate to do w/c’s during fishless cycling but you may have to. Watch it another day and see if it starts dropping. If not, do a 25% w/c and see if that’s enough to do something. If not, you may have to do more but start at the minimum. Keep us posted.
Ok to update. I got impatient after only 1 week of cycling (don't know if I could survive 4+ weeks)so I .......... Didn't add fish. Instead I raided my 20 long that has a tidal 75 (yeah, I know overkill). I actually removed it from the tank and put it on the 33 gallon. I had media for the aqueon filter that is currently cycling the 33 gallon tucked into the tidal for the last few months. I had lots of extra media in the tidal because, honestly, it was stronger than my black skirts liked. I was able to put a smaller filter on the 20 gallon long with some cycled media from the tidal and all I have in that tank currently are 3 black skirts. I had 6 but they've been slowly dying off but I can't tell why. Anyway when I tested just now I got. 5 ammonia,. 25 nitrites, and 40-80 nitrates Those colors are too close for me to tell the difference. Since I way overdid it the first time how much ammonia should I add to keep the cycle going? I think I want to cycle to 4ppm
