Cycling with nutrasoil.

Hi. I currently grow my own cabomba in a 5 gal tank with nutrasoil and plant the grown, healthy trimmings in my 40 gallon with my selected guppies. It's fabulous imo. As I was only planning to use this small tank as my own little planted aquarium with no fish and had fantastic results, I decided to buy a 55 gallon tank and 200 litres of the stuff to fulfill yet another aquarium ambition. When I bought it for the minI tank I cycled for 1 week and then began planting. Slap me on the wrists but I did not do any tests until I was ready to trim and re-plant in my big tank.
Now, with the 55 gallon, I was told as usual and of course the instructions say that this nutrasoil gives an ammonia spike and takes 2 weeks to return to 0. Yes OK fair enough but it has been 10 days. Day 2 was at 0 so I thought ok, right, it's gonna spike any day, but, day 4, 6, 8 and today all I get from the readings is 0.25? I wouldnt even say its that its between the colours for 0 amd 0.25. Am I expecting a massive spike or something because If I do its gonna be way longer than 2 weeks to settle? I'm going to waste my ammonia test solution the way things are going. I'm going to be putting fish in this tank too.

 

If you already have a cycled tank just use some of your old filter media to jump start the cycle in your new tank.

 

I'm fresh starting from scratch hun. I've not long replaced the manky poly wool in my old filter so I don't want to disturb any more. All good fun . I'm an Aquarius what can I say? Lol.

 

Plants don't usually cause an ammonia spike, if there healthy. You wanna do a fish in or fishless cycle?

 

Fishless. It's the nutrasoil that is supposed to spike ammonia levels and nutrients to help mature the filter. I'm not seeing it. I mentioned I bought 200 litres? Sorry I was supposed to say enough for 200 litres so basically there's 20 litres of nutrasoil in the tank. Considering the amount I thought there would have been a huge ammonia jump.

 

Ok I get it now I never used that stuff before. I'd say give it a few days and keep checking parameters.

 

It's excellent stuff but a bit of a pain to plant as it's light. That's where planting tools come in very handy to plant as far down as poss. I have the cabomba in the 5 gal with no co2 and no heater. Ive just added some elodius in there and used little anchor stones from fake plants. I put 4 stems each in the little hole which holds them nicely without slipping. The water movement is enough from the filter. The heat & light it gets is by the patio window 10 hours per day. I hardly have a problem with algae and it pearls beautifully. Sometimes a bit too much as the bubbles gather and sit on the water surface! Very proud of my little water garden!