Help with fishless cycle

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Ozy

Ozy

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
80
Location
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Heres all the start up info -
Tank: 90 Litre (2footer,Tall)
Heater: 100W
Filter: Fluval 205 - Sponges and ceramic (noodles)
Lights: GLO T5 (x2Tubes) - i have to find out about the watts
Substrate: Spagnhum Moss (3litres), Laterite (3000grams), liquid micronutrients (1500mls) all capped with fine brown gravel.
Plants: I cant name them all however if you want me to i will find out i know i have plenty of hairgrass in there. The tank is heavily planted

I used a tray of noodles from an established tank. I pretty much took them out rinsed them in donor tanks water and put them straight in to the new filter then switched the power on.

I had filled up the tank 2 days ago and done a water check last night. here are my readings

Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: off the charts
Nitrate: off the charts

i have been adding 5-7 drops of pure amonia daily as well.

Can anyone tell me what to expect with my readings? from the above i believe that the bio noodles from the established tank had plenty of ammonia eating bacteria they inturn produce nitrites and nitrates. However, it seems that nitrite feeding bacteria have not colonised yet. Am I sought of right? if so when would one expect to add fish??

Secondly, here are the fish i wish to add

German blue Male and Electric blue female ram
x5Cardinal Tetras
x5Head and Tail Light tetras
x4 Amano shrimps
x2 Pleco bristlenose or x4 Otocinclus or both if i am not overloading?

Is this amount of fish too many?
 
Once the ammonia hits zero you need to continue dosing back up until nitrites hit zero then do a massive water change at least 75 percent or more to bring down your nitrate levels then you can add fish. It seems like you have another week or two before your ready but you are definitely on the right track and in the second stage of the cycle.
 
Your cycle is right on track & doing well for just a couple of days into it! The nitrite>nitrate bacteria are there because you have lots of nitrates but they are just not quite up to speed yet. If you have already dosed ammonia today, no big deal. If you havent, skip it. Skip ammonia for the next 2-3 days & wait to see if your nitrites start to drop. If they dont, then its time for a big water change with temperature matched, properly conditioned water.

Also, make sure you are checking your ph daily- ph fluctuations can have an effect on your cycle & bacteria. You have to make sure its staying reasonably steady. A crash will slow or stop your cycle altogether. Let us know how things look over the next few days! :)
 
Thanks good to know that im on the right track. I really can not wait to add the fish, Must show you a picture as soon as i can get my hands on a camera.
 
Hi, thanks for your reply. Last night i dosed a little more ammonia - this was before i read your reply :( i did a water check an hour later - all the params for Ammonia Nitrite and Nitrate are 0. My original check of the nitrates the other night was wrong. It sais on the instructions to shake the bottle etc etc and i didnt. I've been checking the PH every day also. It has not budged from 6.0. I'll check everything again in the next couple of days.
 
Hi again, I'm afraid I’ve made a real booboo. I have been adding pure ammonia that I bought from Safeway. It's called 'Cloudy Ammonia' I’ve done some research on this brand and have come across many forums where people have happily used it in their fishless cycle. However it contains a very small amount of detergent (I found out later) apparently the type of detergent it is can be eaten up by microbes over time. Hence by the time your cycle is done the microbes will have eaten it all up. I really hope this is the case?

Thinking it was safe to put the fish in to the tank; I put them in Saturday afternoon. pH, Nitrite and Nitrate were where they needed to be. At first they seemed ok just the usual exploring the tank etc. I should point out at this point that I am also injecting pressurised Co2 in to the tank (about 1 bubble per second). After about 1/2 an hour the fish were gasping for air at the top of the tank. I tried a number of things such as turning the Co2 off, positioning the inlet for the filter to the top of the water so to aerate the tank. None of this helped so I done a 40% water change. This worked for a few hours but the fish were back at the top again. At this point it was 2 am Sunday morning and I had only one choice - take the fish out, which I did.

This is where I decided to finally learn about KH and GH levels. As I realised that Co2 effects KH as it stops H0+ or something or rather binding with another thing?!? So now I have a KH and GH issue. I checked their levels - my KH test results (I did it 3 times) show that it takes one drop for the solution to turn pale yellow. It never turned blue just straight to yellow. Hence 1 dkh was my result. This means I have no buffering occurring in the tank which was the case as my pH showed 5.5. I put pH up (sodium bicarbonate) I haven’t checked the levels as yet. But now I read somewhere that I probably shouldn’t have done that either – the morning after adding pH up my tank water was milky white. Some articles on the net suggest placing some crushed coral or lime stone in my filter to naturally bring the KH and GH and pH to their normal positions. Should I do this or should simply wait a few weeks to see if it all settles. Furthermore, I must keep feeding the beneficial bacteria – so I’ll put a pinch of good quality fish food daily instead. With the above problems I lost 4 little shrimps. I have left them in the tank to contribute to ammonia.

With the Co2 injection – I have started another thread. I’ve had troubles with this equipment. I know I have done all the connections right. What my problem is, there is no adjustment valve on the Dymax RX – 122 regulator just the needle valve. Hence I have no idea how to get my pressure up to 10psi. In fact I don’t even know which one of the gauges will show the 10psi. The one on the left shows 10psi as the max reading is this where it should be? If so my current reading is between 3-4.

I’m really rambling on here I must stop otherwise I will go on for ever! I suppose what I’m trying to get at here is: WHAT THE HELL DO I DO if anything???????? Should I just wait a few weeks? Do I need to do something for buffering - something permanent? As my substrate is sphagnum moss capped with gravel – I know it will forever lower my pH to 6.0. My tap water is 7.0. Also the thing with sphagnum is that it will stop KH from doing its thing.

PS I didn’t display the GH result here as I forgot what the value was I will check and post tonight.
 
Apparently my regulator is fine where it is ive been told. As for my fish gasping for air, well my co2 was on quite some time before i added them in. I was doing alot of experimenting with the needle valve/bubble counter and must have filled the tank up with co2. The fish were gasping for air as there was very little oxygen in the tank. I have since stopped messin about with the co2. I introduced the fish back in last night. They looked fantastic swimming around comfortably. They were constantly schooling/schoaling (not sure how to spell it) so im really happy about that. I kept the co2 off for today as i can not monitor them. Over the long weekend i will attempt to find a comfortable level of co2 for them.
 
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