Ammonia cycling

[BrianJR]

Thanks to advice I received here, I've got my 15 gal tank up and cycling. I'm doing a fishless cycle, so I added enough pure ammonia to get an initial concentration of 5ppm. I also added a raw shrimp to help the cycling process. Now comes the my questions:

1) Should I continue to add ammonia to the tank? Or is the initial addition plus the shrimp enough?
2) How long should I leave the shrimp in the tank? I don't want it to start growing algae.
3) How often should I change the water during the cycling process?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Fishyfanatic]

You don't have to change water during the fishless cycling phases. Monitor your levels because excess ammonia levels will actually stall your cycle. The raw shrimp was not needed since you are dosing with pure ammonia, but you could just leave it in the tank and stop dowing with the ammonia. Check your levels to make sure that the tank is actually cycling and its not stalling out. The shrimp stays in until the tank is done cycling. Before you add fish you'll need to do water changes to get the shrimp waste out of the tank.

 

[FawnN]

I would take out the shrimp. Like Fishyfanatic stated, the excess amount of ammonia will definitely take your tank longer to cycle, if at all. Having too much ammonia could actually kill off your bacteria and prevent it from growing.

I would normally bring up the ammonia levels to 4ppm, drop the level of water in your tank, bring the temp up in your tank to 82 and add an airstone for additional aeration.

The warmer temps will speed up the bacteria growth and the additional aeration will give it more O2.

Once it begins to fall, I would only add enough to bring it back up to 2ppm. Hope that helps.

 

[BrianJR]

Thanks for the advice! I'll take the shrimp out, add some heat and keep the ammonia levels around 2ppm. At what point should I stop the ammonia additions?

 

[rich311k]

Once you see nitrites start adding half as much ammonia. You need to keep ammonia available untill the end, or the bacteria you are cultivating will starve and die.

 

[Zagz]

Then once your nitrates are at least 10 ppm and your nitrites are 0, do a large water change and you will be cycled.