Is My Cycling Almost Done?

[Maltee]

I've been cycling my 5 gallon aquarium for many weeks. I'm doing a fishless cycle using pure janitorial ammonia, according to the guide posted on this forum: http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forum...guide-and-faq-to-fishless-cycling-148283.html

I followed all the steps and it seemed to be working just fine, until now. I seem to be "stuck" on step L, which is one of the very last steps.
According to the directions, this is step L

Add your ammonia up to 4ppm one more time. Look at the clock. If within 24 hours you can turn that 4ppm of ammonia > nitrItes > nitrAtes… congratulations! After the 24 hours your test results should be ammo-0 nitrItes-0 and have lots of nitrAtes. You grew one heck of a bio-filter and are going to have ridiculously happy fish!

First of all, when I add the ammonia up to 4 ppm, it doesn't drop to 0 in 24 hours. In fact, there's still at least 1ppm of ammonia 3 days later, although my nitrItes are 0 and my nitrAtes are very high (like 80). It seems to be converting about 1ppm of ammonia every 24 hours. Is that good enough? Is there anything I should do?

 

[stevedocs]

Don't add so much ammonia, you only have a small take and probably small filter so not much room for the bb to colonise. What are you planning on keeping? Are you going to have a huge bioload? Remember your tank will adapt to what you put in it. What's the point of being able to convert so much ammonia when all that will happen is your tank will adapt to converting whatever your stocked bio load is and any extra bb will starve and die off. I've had a similar thing in my 6 gallon

 

[librarygirl]

Did your nitrites rise and then fall? Has ammonia conversion slowed or has it always processed down to 1 in 24 hours? First test your PH; drops are common when cycling and if it drops too low (mid-low 6's) it can stall things. With that said you don't need to dose to for such a small tank (although it didn't harm anything either). I'd do a full water change to restore buffers and nutrients in the water (don't forget to use dechlorinator). Wait an hour or so and test the tank; if you have 0 ammonia, redose to 2. If you have 1-2, leave it alone. If you have more than 2, then you probably overdosed to begin with; if it's more than 4 do another water change to get it down lower. Then wait 24 hours and see what happens. Give it a few days to see if conversion speeds up.

 

[Maltee]

Thank you for your advice. Sorry for my late reply.

I did a major water change, and dosed the ammonia up to 2 ppm. 24 hours later, it was .25 ppm. Should I keep dosing up to 2 ppm until it tests 0 ppm of ammonia in 24 hours?

Do you think one of my problems may have been my tests? Before I was using dip strip tests to test for ammonia. I ran out of them and bought the chemical vial tests instead. I seem to be getting slightly different results than I got with the strip tests. I've heard before that strip tests are inaccurate.

I still have those dip strip tests for ph, nitrites, and nitrates. My ph has always tested to be 6, which doesn't seem to make sense since the tank seems to have been cycling. I don't know how I could have grown bacteria if my ph has always really been 6. I took a sample to a fish store last week for them to test, and their test showed my ph as 7.5.

stevedocs, I'm planning on keeping a single betta fish in there, and maybe a few ghost shrimp.

 

[Wolfsblood]

Get yourself an API master liquid test kit. You will probably get different reading for everything once you do.

 

[librarygirl]

Yep keep dosing every 24 hours if it falls; the drop in ammonia is a good sign though. I'd get the API Master kit as it has the liquid tests for everything you need and they are more accurate than the strips.

 

[Maltee]

I have the API liquid test for ammonia. I guess I should go out and get the liquid tests for the other things too.

I dosed it up to 2 ppm ammonia. 24 hours later, the ammonia tested to be .25 ppm. A day later, it's STILL .25 ppm.

And actually, I think I may have found the problem. I just tested my tap water, and it's testing out to have .25 ppm of ammonia in it. What should I do?

 

[shellieca]

Once your BB is built up the .25 ammonia in your tap won't matter. Keep dosing ammonia & test every 24hrs, you're seeing a drop in ammonia so the process is working.

 

[librarygirl]

It can be hard to distinguish between 0 and .25 on the API kit, depending on the lighting in the room. To be sure whether it's really .25 or 0, you can try a couple of things:

1. Get some distilled or spring water and test it for ammonia, then compare it to a new tank test; if they match, the tank is really 0 ammonia.
2. Look at the tube from below; it's easier to tell whether it's really yellow or has a greenish tint that way. Or, take off the top, put the tube on a white piece of paper and look down into the tube, sometimes that helps too.

Make sure the lighting in the room is good, try different lighting and see if you get different results.

After all that even if it is still .25, that's not a problem, most of it is being processed so that's a good thing.