Gingimaru
Aquarium Advice Activist
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2011
- Messages
- 148
Hi all 
me and my partner have just finished cycling our new tank we believe. its a 35ltr (roughly 10US gallons) tank with a marina S10 slim power filter, a suitable heater and a bubble stone.
i read through a guide to fishless cycling on these forums (thank you!) and followed it the best i could. we got some ammonia from home base and added between 1 and 2ml (this equates to about 5-8ppm) at first this reading didnt change for a couple of weeks it seemed. then one day it suddenly dropped! so i did a nitrite test (i use the API master kit) and it went off the charts! YAY! so i started adding a little less ammonia (around 1-1.5ml to get about a 2-5ppm ammonia reading) just to keep the bacteria fed. about a week later my nitrites fell to 0ppm! so the last few days i have been adding upto 3ml of ammonia as a test really to make sure its all working fine and so far it does seem as if i can add 2-3ml of ammonia, and have my nitrites and ammonia drop to 0ppm in 12-48hrs. there are no ornaments in the tank at the moment so it looks very empty! and also there is not a single spot of algae anywhere that i can see in this new tank which i found a little wierd as the guide i read suggested that your tank would be covered in brownn algae. is that normal?
for all you experts out there. would you consider my tank cycled?
we are going on saturday to get some new silk ferns and a new ornament (we will be salt bathing the old ornaments to make sure any bad things from the old tank dont get into the new tank) as well as an apple snail, and my boss has kindly offered to give me a couple of cherry shrimp. his have been breeding like mad and he has about 40 or so now! these new shrimp and apple snail will be to compleiment the betta fish we have at the moment.
me and my partner have just finished cycling our new tank we believe. its a 35ltr (roughly 10US gallons) tank with a marina S10 slim power filter, a suitable heater and a bubble stone.
i read through a guide to fishless cycling on these forums (thank you!) and followed it the best i could. we got some ammonia from home base and added between 1 and 2ml (this equates to about 5-8ppm) at first this reading didnt change for a couple of weeks it seemed. then one day it suddenly dropped! so i did a nitrite test (i use the API master kit) and it went off the charts! YAY! so i started adding a little less ammonia (around 1-1.5ml to get about a 2-5ppm ammonia reading) just to keep the bacteria fed. about a week later my nitrites fell to 0ppm! so the last few days i have been adding upto 3ml of ammonia as a test really to make sure its all working fine and so far it does seem as if i can add 2-3ml of ammonia, and have my nitrites and ammonia drop to 0ppm in 12-48hrs. there are no ornaments in the tank at the moment so it looks very empty! and also there is not a single spot of algae anywhere that i can see in this new tank which i found a little wierd as the guide i read suggested that your tank would be covered in brownn algae. is that normal?
for all you experts out there. would you consider my tank cycled?
we are going on saturday to get some new silk ferns and a new ornament (we will be salt bathing the old ornaments to make sure any bad things from the old tank dont get into the new tank) as well as an apple snail, and my boss has kindly offered to give me a couple of cherry shrimp. his have been breeding like mad and he has about 40 or so now! these new shrimp and apple snail will be to compleiment the betta fish we have at the moment.
