Can I add fish now? Fishless cycle

[55tanker]

I'm new to cycling tank and I have been doing fishless cycle for two weeks now but I'm clueless as to what my next step should be. Do you think my parameter is safe enough to throw the 4 feeder zebra minnows I bought a couple weeks ago in to speed up the cycling?

Here's my reading if you can help me decipher if my tank is cycled. I wanted the test kit to last as long as possible so I thought I only needed to test for ammonia which I should have tested everything. Ugh me. "/" means I tested multiple times throughout the day.

9/2 is when I dosed Ammonia and on 9/5 when I read the wrong bottle and thought it was 0 when it was 3 so I dosed again, hence the 8ppm. Ugh me again. I either did 50% water change that same day or the day after.
-------pH ----Ammonia----Nitrite---Nitrate
9/3----7.9-------0.4---------0 -------- 4
9/4 -------------- 2--------- 0
9/5-----8------3/8/4 ------ 0--------- 0
9/6--------------4/2
9/7 --------------2
9/9---------------3
9/? ------------- 3
9/12 ----------- 1
9/13----7.2---- 1 -----------5---------5
9/14 ---7.2----- 0 ----------5 ------- 5

The bottle for nitrite is very purple so it might be higher than 5 or it can be 2. The chart for 2 and 5 is very similar but neither really matched the bottle.

I'm also not good at reading the results as some are so hard to figure out so these what I think it is and sometimes I go between the two numbers.

I assume I have to wait until all the readings are zero across the border before they're "cycled". What should I do to lower the nitrite and nitrate? Should I do another water change? 50% again?

for your time.

 

[Upstate TBarbs]

I'm playing the waiting game as well. I believe it is when your tank can convert 4PPM Ammonia to 0 PPM, and also show 0 PPM NitrIte that you can add fish. Also, depending on your nitr8 level, probably looking at a massive water change.

And if you want to compare screwups, over the past 4 days I have had to do 135 gallons of water changes, just to get my nitrIte reading down to 2PPM. And my tank is a 54 gallon corner unit.

 

[V227]

Tanker, it's okay to start a "Fish In" cycling process. I would do a 25% - 35% WC then put your
Zebra minnows in. Feed the fish once a day and only a "very" small amount. You will have to conduct one 25% - 35% WC every day for about 3 more weeks. Preferably done after feeding. By then your tank will likely have been fully cycled. You can start to slowly stock your tank at that point, and your tank cleaning chores, WC's. Reduced to once a week. It's up to you regarding the water testing. I think test kits are a good tool, but I don't use them. Good luck.

 

[V227]

Upstate, i' m still laughing over your reply. I'm sure you didn't screw anything up. I admire your dedication. It's likely that frequent massive WC's during the N. Cycle actually extends the time it takes the BB to mature. Keep the updates coming.

 

[Upstate TBarbs]

Upstate, i' m still laughing over your reply. I'm sure you didn't screw anything up. I admire your dedication. It's likely that frequent massive WC's during the N. Cycle actually extends the time it takes the BB to mature. Keep the updates coming.

I was under the impression that anything above 5 PPM nitrIte would be bad for the bacteria colony, per Dr Tims Fishless Cycle instructions:
"You want to be careful adding more ammonia because you do not want the nitrite-nitrogen over 5 mg/L as this will start to poison the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria".

Fishless Cycling - How to Start - A detailed guide from DrTim's Aquatics

And if I had to do 135 gallons of water changes just to get my nitrItes back on scale, that comes out to about 511 liters. So if my math is right, my nitrItes were over 500 PPM before the water changes.

I have reduced the feeding of ammonia to the colony to about .5 to 1 PPM every couple of days, until I see the nitrItes go down.

On the plus side, I know that my tank will process 4 PPM ammonia into nitrIte in under 24 hours.

 

[V227]

I am certainly no authority on a "Fishless" cycling process. Every tank that I've set up, which has been numerous, was cycled old school, "Fish In". No water testing, "optional" one small daily WC, feed sparingly, a 4 to 6 week maturation period, then good to go. I rarely lost fish during cycling. I don't know Dr. Tim, but i' m sure he has a strong back and biceps from hauling all those buckets of water during his large fishless cycling WC's. Seriously, it just seems that you are working too hard. No offense meant.

 

[Upstate TBarbs]

None taken. I'm just trying to compare notes from all the methods and try what seems reasonable.

Years ago, we tossed the fish into the water and hoped for the best.

 

[BBradbury]

Hello 55...

You don't have to wait to add a few fish. Choose a hardy species that's easy to keep like Platys, Swordtails, Danios or Rasboras. Add 3 or 4 for every 10 gallons of water and test for traces of ammonia and nitrite. Feed a little every day or two. If you have a positive test for either, you change out 25 percent of the tank water. Just test daily and when you have no traces of these forms of nitrogen, the tank is established. Once established, you remove and replace half the water every week to maintain good water conditions for the fish.

B

 

[55tanker]

Thanks all for the input! I'm so glad for so many replies. Lol Upstate for your screw-up, yeah yours worse than mine! Hopefully it's all good from here on! I like this forum. I'm going to stay and make myself at home here.

I had some problems this past couple weeks about other stuff that I posted at a different forum and no advice at all on my multiple post thread despite being a very active place. And I swore one of my thread never even got posted. So I looked for another site which is this and I realized I already had an account on here so I just logged in.

Again, great community here. I'll have a lot more questions to come and some mistakes and possible dumb question but I know ya'll be good to me. It's my first time setting up my 55g into a fish tank(not including all my other attempts at smaller tanks years and years ago with zero knowledge of fish at all, had them all died and gave up. I admit I was one of those oblivious people who think oh just put fish in and feed). I was going to start last year but waited until I had my own place and more funds. I'm glad I waited.

Such noob friendly place. Much love.

 

[dalto]

If you want to switch from fishless to fish-in you should do a 100% water change first to get rid of all the nitrites in the water from the fishless cycle.

 

[55tanker]

Another ugh me, why did I do that moment. Yesterday I did about 2/3rd water change. I was too lazy to put new water in so I left it at that overnight. This morning I added the water.

Well this past hour I decided I can put the fish back in then do a water test...(assuming the water would be better than previous test)

I net them one by one. Once I got all four in I noticed one is dead and one half dead. I net them all back out. The two didn't make it but the other two seems like their normal self

I did the water test and compared it to the one before the water change. pH jumped from 7.2 to 8.2 and ammonia went from 0 to 0.5. Both nitrite and nitrate are still 5.

Any idea why there was an ammonia spike? How do I prevent pH from changing during water change?
I formed a couple ideas. The water filter was off for about an hour before I realized I shouldn't let it dry out cause possibly all the good bacteria in there would die off so I plugged it back in. I had all the rocks from the feeder tank in a bucket and put the bucket in the tank in hope there's good bacteria in there to speed up the process but when the tank was 1/3rd full, the bucket was above water so the rocks weren't exposed to the tank water throughout the night. I used warmish coolish water instead of cold water because my heater broke so it'll take forever for the temp to rise on it's own before putting the fish back in. Think all of these are the reason for the new ammonia or something I don't know about? Never have less than full water tank running?



Edit: I should add the tank is still cloudy. Every water change it's always can't see the equipment through the water for a day cause of the stupid Flourite substrate, hazy cloudy another day and by the third day it's good enough. I did add a plastic bag and poured water into it and I believe that helped it cleared up faster today. Probably will be clear tomorrow. Every time I move the substrate, the tank becomes cloudy too. I extremely regret buying Flourite and would never buy it again. Not worth the hassle. I did Flourite/Eco-complete mix cause I couldn't decide which of the two is better.

 

[dalto]

If you have chloramines in your water, many test kits will test positive for ammonia.

I am a little confused. Why did you take the fish out and where did you keep them overnight?

 

[55tanker]

I have 5.5g tank that I have been breeding snails for food and I also have a couple of rcs. I never cycled that tank since it was just snail and shrimp but I do water change every couple days. Zero death so far.

My 55g once cycled is to house dwarf puffer fish and live plants. Pretty ambitious or impatient for starting two tank at the same time and I just bought a third this past week week... but in my defense it's only 1g. =P Multi-tank syndrome?

edit: I don't have a working heater anymore so I didn't know if the new water being put in would raise or lower the temp too fast so I took them out to let the new wc settle for the day, But if I didn't take them out and put them in the breeder tank, all would probably be dead when I woke up?

 

[Fresh2o]

Not sure why you added the fish to the tank and THEN tested the water. Should have been the other way around. The nitrate is not an issue but the 5+ ppm nitrite is. I would continue to change the water until you bring the nitrite and ammonia down (to zero). Yes, chloramine is another way the ammonia gets into the system.
Personally I would have stuck with the fishless cycle; no need to add fish only to take them out a month later. Better yet, try to get a hold of seasoned media.

 

[55tanker]

My tank has pretty much been at a standstill the past week. What should I do now? How do I lower Nitrite?

--------pH -Ammonia-Nitrite--Nitrate
9/15----7.2-----0------5-------5
9/16----8.2-----0.5-----5------5
9/17----7.4----0.25-----5------5
9/18----7.4----0.25-----5------5
9/19----7.3-----0-------5------5

 

[55tanker]

Better yet, try to get a hold of seasoned media.

Are there any other way? I only have one friend who has an aquarium but he hasn't replied in over a month after saying he can give me some.