No amonia? Should I add more fish?

[BHBowhunter]

I put in a small fish three days ago and he is now eating every time i put food in for him, he eats therfore he craps! lol. Anyway my amonia levels are still at zero. I used stress coat and stress zyme to help build the filter, ive done everything i can think of but......... Should i add another fish to get the cycle jump started?



oh yea it is a 55 gal tank, im thinking about adding a catfish of some sort to clean up the bottom. thanks as always ladies and gents!

 

[mulron]

At this point, I would say no, even the catfish. Let the tank cycle the way it is. It will take time for you to get noticable ammonia levels in a 55gal but that is normal. roughly a week to 10days.

 

[fishweed]

How are the nitrite levels?

We are just setting up a new tank, and never did see noticable ammonia levels - I think the ammonia test tends to be not very sensitive and if you added live bacteria (we used Nutrafin cycle) you may not get enough to test because the ammonia eating bacteria grows well.

I would expect you to start seeing rapidly rising nitrite. That is what happened to us. The Nitrobacter (sp?) appears to take a lot longer to get established.

Good Luck