Hi everyone!! I am looking for some help with my son's 10 gallon Glo Fish tank which he got for his birthday back in August.
Here's what has happened so far: we set the tank up a couple days after his birthday and being newbies at all this we took a sample of the water to the local pet store. They said our pH was high and sent us home with some Stability to fix it. Went back the next day and was informed it looked good and we should try 3 fish. Got the fish home and added them as explained to us (not drip acclimation but gradually emptying the water from the bag. The fish promptly died in about 30 minutes.
So....I started doing my research on here and decided to try fishless cycling as per the thread I found on here. I bought new filter material (the one you cut up yourself) and I have ammonium chloride because I couldn't get hold of the liquid ammonia. I also bought the API testing kit. We started the process on August 28th.
Since then we have dosed ammonia back up to 4ppm 3 times. The ammonia levels are dropping a lot faster now - only 6 days between doses last time. We started nitrite testing on 9/17 and have never got a reading above 0. For fits and giggles I tested the nitrates on 9/30 but they were also 0.
My understanding is that this means the cycle has not completed. What should my next step be? I haven't changed out any water during this process but I have topped it up and used Prime to dechlorinate it. The heat is around 82.
Thank you for any tips you can give me! I really want to avoid killing more fish and having an upset kid but this seems to be taking forever
Here's what has happened so far: we set the tank up a couple days after his birthday and being newbies at all this we took a sample of the water to the local pet store. They said our pH was high and sent us home with some Stability to fix it. Went back the next day and was informed it looked good and we should try 3 fish. Got the fish home and added them as explained to us (not drip acclimation but gradually emptying the water from the bag. The fish promptly died in about 30 minutes.
So....I started doing my research on here and decided to try fishless cycling as per the thread I found on here. I bought new filter material (the one you cut up yourself) and I have ammonium chloride because I couldn't get hold of the liquid ammonia. I also bought the API testing kit. We started the process on August 28th.
Since then we have dosed ammonia back up to 4ppm 3 times. The ammonia levels are dropping a lot faster now - only 6 days between doses last time. We started nitrite testing on 9/17 and have never got a reading above 0. For fits and giggles I tested the nitrates on 9/30 but they were also 0.
My understanding is that this means the cycle has not completed. What should my next step be? I haven't changed out any water during this process but I have topped it up and used Prime to dechlorinate it. The heat is around 82.
Thank you for any tips you can give me! I really want to avoid killing more fish and having an upset kid but this seems to be taking forever