New planted shrimp tank

It's 15gallons and I'm really happy with it... Have been cycling it for two weeks now. Seeding it every second day with BB.
Ammonia started at 0ppm went up to 3ppm now it's coming down. I'm sitting at about 1ppm. Still hasn't made it to the nitrites or nitrates, so they are both sitting at 0. The plants are doing very nice, I'm injecting 1 bubble every 3 seconds. I have a few ceramic cubes for playing and waiting on some mineral balls (LFS ordering them in). However I really want to make sure my shrimp will survive. What are some things I may have missed or might want to look at before I add shrimp? Thanks in advance.


Also how often should I be doing water changes I've been doing 25% twice a week ? Is that enough?

 

I'm a little confused. Is this a fishless cycle? If so, what are you using as your ammonia source? What BB are you adding?

It is a little surprising that your ammonia would drop from 3ppm to 1ppm and not show any nitrites. Maybe your plants are absorbing the ammonia.

As for water changes, if your cycling fishless there is no need to perform any water changes, unless your ammonia or nitrite get up above 4ppm, since levels that high can stall the cycle.

If your doing a fish-in cycle, you should be doing daily water changes with Prime with the intent of keeping the ammonia/nitrite levels under 1ppm at all times. The reason is because Prime can detox up to 1ppm ammonia/nitrite for 24 hours.

 

I'm adding 'AquaLife' ammonia and nitrate digesting bacteria, as well as 'AQUMEDI' bio bacta. Not the usual brands but I'm new to Singapore and this is all I can find. It worked fine for my other two tanks. As for my ammonia source I just let the soil erosion take care of it. And yes it is a fish less cycle. First attempt at a fish less cycle I usually do a fish in cycle, do you recommend I add fish? I have access to some brine shrimp... They are more hardy than RCS and bees? Or some platies?

 

Cute tank!
Other than that, I have nothing.

 

Cute tank!
Other than that, I have nothing.

Thanks!

 

I'm not familiar with letting soil erosion produce ammonia, but generally you never want to add fish to a tank that is testing positive for ammonia, unless you can keep the ammonia level below 1ppm and are using Prime.

 

I'm not familiar with letting soil erosion produce ammonia, but generally you never want to add fish to a tank that is testing positive for ammonia, unless you can keep the ammonia level below 1ppm and are using Prime.

Does anyone know if this works??
Also I believe my water source has .5 ammonia. So that also boosted it. I can buy liquid ammonia if anyone thinks it would be worth it. Also I added some filter media from my cycled cichlid tank... And some media from my koi pond... Hopefully that should really seed it! I was reading about instant cycles? Would that happen?

 

I added a tea bag of fish food and quite happy with the results:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: 1ppm
Nitrates: 5ppm

I'm not familiar with fish less cycling so when do I begin to lower it. Do I remove the fish food? Because I believe thanks to my old tank filter media it's doing great. I bought a new filter for one of my other tanks and it came with media so I seeded that first and now it's healthy I put the old media into this tank.

I'm really confused?

 

Does anyone know if this works??
Also I believe my water source has .5 ammonia. So that also boosted it. I can buy liquid ammonia if anyone thinks it would be worth it. Also I added some filter media from my cycled cichlid tank... And some media from my koi pond... Hopefully that should really seed it! I was reading about instant cycles? Would that happen?

My source water actually runs between .5 and 1 ppm ammonia. I've honestly used just water changes to cycle successfully before Yes, if you have some spare seeded media you can toss into the filter, that will definitely speed up the cycle, just make sure you are keeping ammonia in there for the BB to eat. It's not "instant" but it really does reduce the time (ime usually a few days with well seeded media).

It sounds like you're doing things correctly to me. What are you confused on?

The mineral balls have calcium in them, correct? I have never used them, and only have seen one other person on here mention them recently, so I don't really remember what all they have.

The only thing I can think of to mention is that you'll want to keep an eye on them to see how they are reacting to the CO2, since too much is bad for them.