Cycling my 200L

Cycling Advice

Hi all, I started my fishless cycle on my 200L aquarium about a week ago now. This will be my fifth tank that I’ve fishless cycled so I’m fairly experienced with it. I jumpstarted the cycle using some media from one of my established tanks. However, my cycle appears to have just stopped at 1ppm ammonia and 2ppm of nitrite and it has been stuck there for 5 days now. I also did a nitrate test and there are already some nitrates being produced. Was just wondering whether I should do a water change to replenish lost water minerals or to just leave it and let it run it’s course? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

 

What's your pH & KH?

 

What's your pH & KH?

My pH is about 7.8 and I’m not sure what my KH is. I’ll have to do a test and I’ll get back to you.

 

What's your pH & KH?

Just tested my KH and its 12/13dH

 

My recommendation will always be change out some of the water when something doesn't seem to be doing what it should be doing. By adding seeded media your cycle should be moving quickly.

How many fish are in the tank you took the media from? Had it been running in the cycled tank for at least a month? The bio-load in the tank the media came from will determine how much bacteria there will be on the media and how quickly it will cycle another tank.

 

My recommendation will always be change out some of the water when something doesn't seem to be doing what it should be doing. By adding seeded media your cycle should be moving quickly.

How many fish are in the tank you took the media from? Had it been running in the cycled tank for at least a month? The amount of bacteria on the media will determine how much bacteria there will be on the media and how quickly it will cycle another tank.

Yeah I think I’ll definitely give the water change a try. The tank it was taken from has been running since November 2019 and I added the extra media about 2 months ago. This tank has 2 Honey gourami, 8 espei rasboras and 6 bronze corydoras and it is 64l which is a lot smaller than the 200l I’m currently cycling so I thought that could be what was slowing it down.

 

Yeah I think I’ll definitely give the water change a try. The tank it was taken from has been running since November 2019 and I added the extra media about 2 months ago. This tank has 2 Honey gourami, 8 espei rasboras and 6 bronze corydoras and it is 64l which is a lot smaller than the 200l I’m currently cycling so I thought that could be what was slowing it down.

There should have been plenty of bacteria on the media and it actually should have almost instantly cycled this tank. Actually the amount of water doesn't matter. The bio-load in the water is what matters. You may have added more ammonia than the bacteria was able to handle but bacteria grows quickly so should grow enough to handle the higher bio-load (more ammonia than it was used to) fairly fast.

A water change could very well get this cycle moving forward. After the water change just add enough ammonia to get it up to about 2ppm. That should be enough for now. Once it will process 2ppm you can increase the amount to 2.5. By slowly increasing the amount of ammonia you will give the bacteria time to grow enough to handle the higher amount.

Your future stocking plans will determine how much bacteria you need to grow in this tank. If it is going to be heavily stocked you may want to build it up to where it is processing 4ppm ammonia. That may be overkill but it is better to have too much bacteria than not quite enough.

 

There should have been plenty of bacteria on the media and it actually should have almost instantly cycled this tank. Actually the amount of water doesn't matter. The bio-load in the water is what matters. You may have added more ammonia than the bacteria was able to handle but bacteria grows quickly so should grow enough to handle the higher bio-load (more ammonia than it was used to) fairly fast.

A water change could very well get this cycle moving forward. After the water change just add enough ammonia to get it up to about 2ppm. That should be enough for now. Once it will process 2ppm you can increase the amount to 2.5. By slowly increasing the amount of ammonia you will give the bacteria time to grow enough to handle the higher amount.

Your future stocking plans will determine how much bacteria you need to grow in this tank. If it is going to be heavily stocked you may want to build it up to where it is processing 4ppm ammonia. That may be overkill but it is better to have too much bacteria than not quite enough.

Thanks for all your help and advice! The water change got the cycle going again and it was processing 2ppm ammonia into nitrate less than 24 hrs. I have now started stocking and its all going very smoothly so far.