Fishless Cycle Frustrations

[kfoster]

Hello everyone,
This is going to be a long post, I apologise, but I could use some help and advice for anyone willing to read on.

I am new to the fishless cycling regime. I have had fish in the past, but never did the fishless cycle until I heard about how beneficial and humane it is for your future pets, and I'm all about being humane.

I know there is no such thing as a stupid question, but I have a feeling this may be one. So here it goes, I appreciate any constructive information, and I may end up answering the question as I go.

I am wanting to house a male beta fish in a 10 gallon, filtered, unplanted, heated tank. I have everything, minus the fish. It's a beautifully useless tank at the moment.

I started my fishless cycle a month ago, and my testing kit for nitrates/nitrites (API test strips) have never tested positive.

I add my ammonia (Brand: Old Country) to 4ppm, and followed the steps; set up the tank, heater turned up, no lights on, dropped water level to let filter make bubbles, test every few days.
---A note that I did not have any seeding material, so I started from just the ammonia, and added a bit of fish food to the tank.

Eventually the ammonia started to drop and I got excited, I know the nitrites take some time to show up. I tested anyway, and nothing (but I wasn't discouraged). So I continued to dose up my ammonia to 4ppm, and if it got around 0.5-1ppm I topped it up to 4 again.

Now it's been a month, as I said, and I have never got a reading for nitrites or nitrates.
BUT... I saw brown algae in my tank, a lot of it. Which means there are nitrates present, I thought?! Am I wrong?

Anyway, I did a water change, topped ammonia back up to 4ppm.
So I thought maybe I missed the nitrite and nitrate spike... and that maybe I was closer to being done cycling than I thought.

---But if that was the case, the ammonia should have gone down to next to nothing over 24 hours, right? It hasn't. It maybe went down to 2 over two days.

I'm getting frustrated, and maybe I shouldn't be. But this fish tank is in my office, and coworkers are starting to call me the crazy lady with the fish tank with no fish in it.

So I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if my testing kit is a POS, or if the cycle is complete and I'm worrying about nothing (but doubtful because the ammonia isn't going down as quickly as I think it should...)

Help, please.

Regards,

Frustrated Fishless Lady

 

[Golfball98]

Test strips are notoriously inaccurate you probably are cycled by now. But just to be sure I would recommend you invest in an API master test kit, the drop one, its more accurate

Sent from my AT10-A using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[kfoster]

Test strips are notoriously inaccurate you probably are cycled by now. But just to be sure I would recommend you invest in an API master test kit, the drop one, its more accurate

Sent from my AT10-A using Aquarium Advice mobile app

Thank you for the reply.

I wasn't able to find a drop one for the nitrates/nitrites. I live in a small town. But I will check around again. I have the drop kind for the ammonia, and have heard that the strips can be inaccurate. Hopefully that is the case.
I will update once I find a better test kit.

But again, shouldn't my ammonia be dropping quicker if it is cycled?

Thanks again

 

[Golfball98]

How long is it taking to drop?

 

[Mebbid]

The cycle isn't complete, however if all you want to keep in it is a single betta I would say its complete "enough" a single betta will never come close to producing 2ppm ammonia in a day.

I also second the opinion about getting the master test kit.

What does your ph run at normally?

 

[kfoster]

How long is it taking to drop?

around 2 days to go from 4ppm - ~1ppm.

 

[kfoster]

The cycle isn't complete, however if all you want to keep in it is a single betta I would say its complete "enough" a single betta will never come close to producing 2ppm ammonia in a day.

I also second the opinion about getting the master test kit.

What does your ph run at normally?

Thanks for your reply,

pH is around 7.5... this is assuming that the test strips are accurate for the pH
I have that 5 in 1 test strip from API.

 

[ScotJudd]

See reply below

 

[ScotJudd]

Do yourself a favour, get a liquid test kit, my preference is the API freshwater master test kit, easily sourced on line and cheaper than your LFS. Only then will you really know what your water is doing and which BB colonies have established.
If you have no nitrate readings then you are not cycled. Nitrate levels increase and do not spike, nitrates are mainly reduced by partial water changes.
The general pattern is for the ammonia- nitrite bacteria to establish much quicker than the nitrite-nitrate bacteria.
Increasing the temp to about 80f or a little higher helps the BB multiply, just remember to reduce it before introducing fish.
I think your cycling has been slower than normal because of the lack of seeding the filter. I prefer to get a piece of 'dirty' filter media from a friend and put that in your filter to seed it. I don't have great faith in bottles of liquid bacteria but if that's your only option then give it a try.
A properly cycled tank should have ammonia added to read 4ppm and 24 hours later the ammonia is 0, the nitrites 0 and the nitrates high. At this point you can do a huge water change with conditioned water, chlorine etc in tap water will kill out your filter BB.
If your nitrites exceed your top reading on your test chart then I personally like to do a partial water change with conditioned water to bring it to a readable figure. However the 24 hour rule still applies.
I don't like adding fish until I am sure the tank is cycled.

 

[kfoster]

Do yourself a favour, get a liquid test kit, my preference is the API freshwater master test kit, easily sourced on line and cheaper than your LFS. Only then will you really know what your water is doing and which BB colonies have established.
If you have no nitrate readings then you are not cycled. Nitrate levels increase and do not spike, nitrates are mainly reduced by partial water changes.
The general pattern is for the ammonia- nitrite bacteria to establish much quicker than the nitrite-nitrate bacteria.
Increasing the temp to about 80f or a little higher helps the BB multiply, just remember to reduce it before introducing fish.
I think your cycling has been slower than normal because of the lack of seeding the filter. I prefer to get a piece of 'dirty' filter media from a friend and put that in your filter to seed it. I don't have great faith in bottles of liquid bacteria but if that's your only option then give it a try.
A properly cycled tank should have ammonia added to read 4ppm and 24 hours later the ammonia is 0, the nitrites 0 and the nitrates high. At this point you can do a huge water change with conditioned water, chlorine etc in tap water will kill out your filter BB.
If your nitrites exceed your top reading on your test chart then I personally like to do a partial water change with conditioned water to bring it to a readable figure. However the 24 hour rule still applies.
I don't like adding fish until I am sure the tank is cycled.

Thanks! Yes I don't want to introduce fish too early.
I looked again around town and sure enough there are only test strips and no liquid testing kits (other than the one for ammonia). Faults of rural living I guess. I will see what I can find online.
I'm still confused about the large amount of brown algae in my tank, however.
I'll update if I can get the liquid test kit.

Thanks for your advice

 

[Fishperson]

The API kits are very cheap on ebay and amazon.

Also, as far as brown algae (diatoms) goes, they need three main things to live (from my understanding): lots of light, silicates, and nitrates. But 2 of them are enough. So with light and nitrates, they will grow. With light and silicates, they will grow. With silicates and nitrates, they will grow (they still need some light though). You need to get rid of two of those things to really get them to go away. The silicates come from rock, sand, or gravel, and are continuously being leached out of them. They will go away eventually. Nitrates can be reduced with water changes, but if you don't see any on your test strip then that's fine. You can turn off your tank light if you don't have fish or plants.

 

[kfoster]

The API kits are very cheap on ebay and amazon.

Also, as far as brown algae (diatoms) goes, they need three main things to live (from my understanding): lots of light, silicates, and nitrates. But 2 of them are enough. So with light and nitrates, they will grow. With light and silicates, they will grow. With silicates and nitrates, they will grow (they still need some light though). You need to get rid of two of those things to really get them to go away. The silicates come from rock, sand, or gravel, and are continuously being leached out of them. They will go away eventually. Nitrates can be reduced with water changes, but if you don't see any on your test strip then that's fine. You can turn off your tank light if you don't have fish or plants.

Thanks!

Ya I have left my tank light off the entire time. Only light it gets is the fluorescent light in my office 8 hrs a day. But it seems pretty dark in tank.
I ordered the API master test kit online, and got express shipping, so hopefully I have answers soon!

Thanks for all of the information! Very helpful.

 

[Mebbid]

I don't like adding fish until I am sure the tank is cycled.

9 out of 10 times I would agree with that 100% but if you look at the numbers on cycling you can see just how absurd strictly relying on the 4.0ppm ammo is is when you are talking about a single small fish in a 10g tank.

The 4.0 of ammonia for fishless cycling is largely an arbitrary number. It was picked because it works and no fully stocked tank should ever come near to producing that much ammonia.

1.0ppm of ammonia gets converted into roughly 3.5ppm of nitrate. If you are waiting until the 4.0 ppm gets converted that's nearly 100ppm of nitrate production a week. 1 betta at most will produce maybe 1/10th of that assuming you don't overfeed like crazy. If you are converting 1.0ppm of ammonia and any nitrites at all it will be more than sufficient to handle the bacterial load of a single betta.

 

[Jeremy Z]

Thanks! Yes I don't want to introduce fish too early.
I looked again around town and sure enough there are only test strips and no liquid testing kits (other than the one for ammonia). Faults of rural living I guess. I will see what I can find online.
I'm still confused about the large amount of brown algae in my tank, however.
I'll update if I can get the liquid test kit.

Thanks for your advice

It's not unusual to see algae during a cycle. Algae loves the water conditions that are created for a cycle. You just want to make sure you leave the tank light off during the cycle. The light will promote the algae growth.

 

[Jeremy Z]

It's not unusual to see algae during a cycle. Algae loves the water conditions that are created for a cycle. You just want to make sure you leave the tank light off during the cycle. The light will promote the algae growth.

Sorry!!! I didn't see page 2 of the thread where this was already addressed.

 

[kfoster]

Looks like my testing kit is shipped and on it's way!
After a full 48 hours my ammonia did not drop to 0. Still around 1 right now

 

[threnjen]

Hmm I don't know how I missed this thread.
It's so hard to be sure what is going on with strips But I see that you have a test kit on the way. This is really going to help.
By chance have you ever done a water change? It is totally possible that you have stalled at this point, so a 50% water change might not help, but it definitely won't hurt.
I also agree you can just cycle it to 2pp for just a betta, so that might help you finish faster.

 

[kfoster]

Thanks for your input!

I ended up doing a water change two days ago. About 70%... Then I dosed the ammonia to 4ppm because it was well under that. And it's dropping (a little faster than it use to...but like I said doesn't seem like it's fully cycled)

But yes hopefully the kit gives me more of an answer!

Maybe I'm just not patient....but I guess I never thought it would take well over a month to cycle the 10 gallons.

 

[kfoster]

Hello everyone...

Got my testing kit in the mail,

I had bumped up my ammonia yesterday to around 2ppm, and today this new test kit says:

Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm



I've attached a picture. Any more insight? Is it just taking forever? Am I stalled?

Thanks guys.

 

[ScotJudd]

Hi. I would be suspicious of your nitrate reading. Generally the ammonia- nitrite BB get going first. When ammonia drops nitrites rise. In the unlikely event that your nitrite BB have been converted to nitrates then where is your nitrate reading. It should be quite high. 2 possibilities. 1. You are not following the API nitrate instructions to the letter but most likely 2. You are not cycled and your perceived fall in ammonia is an incorrect test reading or the ammonia is being absorbed elsewhere - is your tank planted?
If I had those readings I would not think that my tank was cycled and would not add fish.
Quite simply - ammonia in - nitrate out (you may not witness a nitrite reading if BB is good healthy colony) but nitrate is your aim.
Good luck.