How much NH3 when starting fishless cycle?

[Legacy]

I've been reading your cycle report and I've been learning a lot about it. Seeding the filter when doing a fishless cycle is like the best thing ever! I haven't even reached the 24hr mark on my cycle yet since I kinda started over when I seeded it.

Here's the problem with the shrimp... I used a few pieces of Mysis since it was handy because I was feeding it to my archers. Her tank is sand bottom and I tried to scoop out most of it yesterday but it broke into pieces and little tiny bits are scattered everywhere in the tank. You can barely see it but it's there. There is no way I'll be able to get the rest out.

I guess I could do a 50% Water Change today using more water from my archer tank. But now my archer tank is like .001SG saltier maybe I'll be forced to just make more 1.004SG water.

This being said should I wait out the huge amount of ammonia that I have or just change to water 20-50%?

 

[Lonewolfblue]

I'd just change out 20-30%, just like a normal change. And what little that is left of the shrimp, don't worry about it. Just let the cycle take it's course, and with a lot of the shrimp out, the ammonia and nitrite should drop. It would be like having fish in there, a constant source of ammonia. And if you have a gravel vac, can suck some out that way too, just keeping it above the sand. A small amount of shrimp in there will make sure the cycle is completed. Now to just do water changes about every 2 days and watch the ammonia and nitrite levels drop. If they drop, and nitrate rises, you are cycled.

 

[Legacy]

excellent, sounds great. I'll do a change today and see what happens. It's actually happening way quicker than I had expected. Thanks for all the great advice.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

True, it was quick. there is still the small possibility you might see a nitrite spike, since we haven't seen it shoot up yet. But if all those bacteria are already in tact, might not see one. I thought mine was cycled after the first couple days til the nitrites shot up yesterday. They are already on the way back down, so it was a quick one. I'm doing another water change here shortly. Got to go out and do some yard work first. I'll check my nitrates before I do the change and edit my daily post replacing the not checked status.

 

[greenmaji]

again.. if you have any NO2 its going to give your NO3 test a false positive.. testing for it when NO2 is present is a wate of time IMHO..
you could very well have zero NO3 and the test will say you have some.. ignore the reading.. its false..

 

[Legacy]

Ok, so it's been about 3-4 days and my parameters are:

NH3 = 8.0ppm
NO2 = 5.0ppm

I haven't been adding any ammonia or changing any water. I have a feeling if I change my water and get my NH3 down really low that it wont climb back up.