Help!! Nitrogen cycle.

Hello guys,

I have been cycling my tank for 6 weeks now. I did a fishless cycle for 14 days with 0.5ppm of ammonia. I always had 0.5ppm of ammonia with 0 Nitrites and 0 NItrates and felt fishless cycle was not working. So I changed 50% water and started cycling with fish:

Note: The following are only ammonia readings as Nitrite and Nitrate have always been 0 from the beginning.

Day 0 - Added 5x Yellow labs and 5x Five bar cichlids started cycling.
Day 7 - 0.5 ppm : 50% water change.
Day 14 - 0.5 ppm: 50% water change.
Day 17 - 1 ppm : 70% water change(Mostly because feeding twice a day from Day 14 and loss of 1 yellow lab on Day 17).
Day 21 - 0.8 ppm: 70% water change(
Day 28 - 1 ppm: 70% water change

Tap water ammonia is 0 ppm.

I have been dosing Stability from the beginning daily. Prime during water changes for de-chlorinating the water.

From Day 17, I have been feeding twice a day with dosing Prime every 24 hours as prime makes ammonia harmless for the fish.

How long will it take cycle to complete?

 

"How long will it take cycle to complete?"

How long is a piece of string?

Just keep doing the testing and the water changes and the cycle will complete eventually.

 

Many people claimed that ammonia drops after 2 weeks DoraCory. Am I doing any mistakes while cycling?

 

Many people claimed that ammonia drops after 2 weeks DoraCory. Am I doing any mistakes while cycling?

Everyone's tanks are different, everyone's water supplies are different, tanks can take from 4 - 8 weeks to fully cycle fishless and in some cases even longer. As you're now doing a fish-in cycle, which takes longer than a fish-less btw, you'll just have to be patient.

Now that you have fish in, you have to make sure things like water temp and ph are correct whilst changing water.

 

PH is at constant 8.2. The water temperature is at 26 degree Celsius all time. Temperature goes down when doing water changes as I add a bit colder water. I suppose this is normal.

 

when doing partial water changes, I have 1 gal plastic buckets (like the kind kids use at the beach) but they are ONLY used for fish tank water. I heat the water up in the microwave for 2 minutes or 3 if really cold. I add my de-cholorinator and stir it up so there are not cold or hot sections in the bucket. this way the water temp is the same as in my tank 78 degrees F. then the fish don't go into shock with the dip in cold temp and get ich.