So, this is my first time fishless cycling. I seeded my 75gal with a filter cartdridge from my 20gal (placed inside the canister filter of the 75gal) and some gravel, set the temp to 84/85F and have dosed with 10% ammonium hydroxide daily to a concentration of 2-3ppm. Only things in there are slate rocks stuck with aquarium safe silicone, a large piece of driftwood (still leaching some tannins but very little) and substrate is playsand. Rocks and drifwood were boiled before they went in the tank.
It's been slightly over a week since I started and I have needed to do 2 >95% WCs so far because my nitrites keep going above 5ppm and I read this can stall the cycle. Last WC was a day ago and yesterday the parameters 2 hours after WC were slighlty>2ppm, 0.5ppm and 5ppm ammonia/nitrites/nitrates respectively. pH is 7.4 and steady (no surprise there since my water is very hard, it'd probably take some conc. HCl to shift that pH)
One day later: 0.5ppm/>5ppm/160ppm. This seems pretty excessive to me, that my nitrites and nitrates are going up so fast. Should I just do pretty much daily 100% WCs to keep those nitrites below 5ppm? Have other ppl run into this?
I'm bummed caused I thought I wouldn't need to do so many WCs for fishless cycling (don't get me wrong I think its the way to go, I will never cycle with fish again because I think it's cruel to the fish unless u really really know what ure doing and I am nowhere near that), but from what I read it doesn't seem like ppl need to do such extreme WCs
I guess the alternative is to reduce ammonia dosing and if some of the nitrosomonas colony dies due to lack of food I would have to grow those again once the nitrobacter catch up. Also can very high nitrates stall the cycle? I haven't come across anything like that in my reading yet.
Thanks for any advice
It's been slightly over a week since I started and I have needed to do 2 >95% WCs so far because my nitrites keep going above 5ppm and I read this can stall the cycle. Last WC was a day ago and yesterday the parameters 2 hours after WC were slighlty>2ppm, 0.5ppm and 5ppm ammonia/nitrites/nitrates respectively. pH is 7.4 and steady (no surprise there since my water is very hard, it'd probably take some conc. HCl to shift that pH)
One day later: 0.5ppm/>5ppm/160ppm. This seems pretty excessive to me, that my nitrites and nitrates are going up so fast. Should I just do pretty much daily 100% WCs to keep those nitrites below 5ppm? Have other ppl run into this?
I'm bummed caused I thought I wouldn't need to do so many WCs for fishless cycling (don't get me wrong I think its the way to go, I will never cycle with fish again because I think it's cruel to the fish unless u really really know what ure doing and I am nowhere near that), but from what I read it doesn't seem like ppl need to do such extreme WCs
I guess the alternative is to reduce ammonia dosing and if some of the nitrosomonas colony dies due to lack of food I would have to grow those again once the nitrobacter catch up. Also can very high nitrates stall the cycle? I haven't come across anything like that in my reading yet.
Thanks for any advice