Fishless Cycle Problem

[The sea monkeys Rock]

a little bit of fish food will help with the cycling in my experience although it isn't always needed. Using some seeded media is the fastest way by far will help speed things up a lot. Using some gravel and bits of filter pad I managed to cycle a 29g tank in 2 weeks. Just keep at it, they will grow eventually. You might be having issues with the rapid changes in PH causing issues with the bacteria. Also dosing ammonia up to 8ppm might be causing more issues with the nitrogen cycle. You can get by with dosing up to 4ppm daily with ammonia and not worrying about the bacteria starving. That will also cause the insane levels of nitrites you're having to be kept under control. Don't worry, you should be quite close to finished with your cycling

Thanks, yes its actually completed now. I found it was lacking phosphorus. Soon as I added fish food into the filter media it all started to happen. I think I was dosing too high too on the ammonia. I find now I can add any amount of ammonia (within reason) and it converts to Nitrate very quickly.

I have now added fish, but I dont think the fish will be secreting as much ammonia as I had been adding, so I expect most of the bacteria will now die as they'll have much less to eat. Shame because it took me a LONG time to get the biological filter to work that affectively!

 

[Mebbid]

The best thing about that though is that you can fully stock your tank right at the start and it won't matter