New Tank Nitrogen Cycle Question

For about a week now ive started my cycle in my 5.5 gallon tank. Sadly I had to do a fish-in cycle. (1 betta, 1 large ghost shrimp, and 1 blue mystery snail)

When I hit 2 ppm of ammonia, I did a 50% water change. Since, I check the levels with my master kit in the day, and water change at night. My average is 1ppm every day so far. At water change I do a 30 or 50 percent water change and use a double shot of prime then add stability. Also add a tea spoon of aquarium salt to every gallon.

I have a large foam filter with good flow. No nitrites yet.

Am I doing this right at all?

ps: my tap water is 0.25 ppm ammonia fresh from the tap.

 

For about a week now ive started my cycle in my 5.5 gallon tank. Sadly I had to do a fish-in cycle. (1 betta, 1 large ghost shrimp, and 1 blue mystery snail)

When I hit 2 ppm of ammonia, I did a 50% water change. Since, I check the levels with my master kit in the day, and water change at night. My average is 1ppm every day so far. At water change I do a 30 or 50 percent water change and use a double shot of prime then add stability. Also add a tea spoon of aquarium salt to every gallon.

I have a large foam filter with good flow. No nitrites yet.

Am I doing this right at all?

ps: my tap water is 0.25 ppm ammonia fresh from the tap.

Since you have fish in the tank, I recommend that you keep your ammonia below 0.5ppm.

It will be better for them and your tank will cycle just fine. With only those fish in 5 gallons of water you should never let your ammonia get over .5ppm and absolutely not as high as 2ppm.

Same rules apply once your nitrite shows up.
Keep it very low...and the bacteria will still grow to convert what is in the tank.

Here's a good way to think about it:
The ammonia is ALWAYS being produced.
When you test....you are only capturing a snapshot of the ammonia level at that point in time. So even if you constantly change water....the ammonia is still being produced and therefore the bacteria will grow to eat it up.
Same with nitrite.

Keep your levels low...its safer for the fish.

 

Will do, ill vacuum and do more water changes if needed. I know prime makes the ammonia innert but only for 48 hours.

So I am doing everything correctly other than too high ammonia?

 

Welcome to fishlore SpaceCatsAZ

You are on the right track however my suggestion is to worry more about changing some water as often as possible. By all means play around with the test kit. But as Bwood22 wrote ammonia is always being produced. If you are short of time just smash out water changes. Changing up to 50% of the water and replacing with temperature matched conditioned water will not harm the fish.

No need to clean any hard surfaces in fact all hard surfaces are a potential home for bacteria.

If you are very busy just have a bucket of conditioned water beside the tank. Removing and toss water out the window and replacing a few litres regardless of the temperature before work/school. At some time later you can get out the test kit and play around with it. It’s completely safe to change some water in the morning and again at night. No need to test with the test kit.

edit after your last post.

NO DEEP vacuuming just replace water.

 

Yeah...hold off on the vacuuming for now. We want a bunch of good bacteria to grow in the substrate so we don't want to disturb it too much.

 

Will do, ill vacuum and do more water changes if needed. I know prime makes the ammonia innert but only for 48 hours.

So I am doing everything correctly other than too high ammonia?

I agree with the above about not allowing ammonia to go above .5 but also Prime only controls the ammonia for 24 hours, not 48. Unless they reformulated since I bought my last bottle a few months ago. You would want to be dosing prime each water change which will likely be daily for awhile. Cycling sadly takes a long time unless you’re using TSS+ or Fritz bottled bacteria and even then it isn’t suuuuuuuper fast. Takes about 2 weeks (more if your water isn’t as hospitable to the bottled bacteria) if you go that route.

ETA: not a prime expert as I only use it in my axolotl tank. I use Stress Coat Plus in my main tank which is about 7-8 years old so it doesn’t need prime to control excess ammonia or nitrites because I don’t have any. I would still keep a bottle on hand though for emergencies like cycle crashes if I didn’t have my axolotl but I’m a die hard stress coat plus user at ❤️

 

Lots of great information and i'll change my routine accordingly. Thank you!

 

Isn’t it supposed to be 1 tbsp per 5 gallons? And what is the purpose of the salt?

 

Isn’t it supposed to be 1 tbsp per 5 gallons? And what is the purpose of the salt?

1tsp per gallon is the same as 1tbs per 3 gallons that will bring your salinity to 1.001 which is perfectly acceptable for the majority of freshwater setups.

The salt will also help prevent nitrite poisoning if the nitrite gets too high during the fish-in cycle.

 

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

Been doing nightly 50% changes (conditioned, salted, stabalized water) and ive been at .5 ppm for three days now. Tested today, no nitrites yet.