Cycling

[lonksenopa]

So I set up a 5 gallon tank I intend to stock with shrimp only. I added a bunch of plants and a sponge from one of my established aquariums to help it cycle faster. It's been almost 3 weeks now and I haven't seen any ammonia or nitrite in my testing. This is strange for me as I've cycles many aquariums and I usually see ammonia or nitrite a few days/a week into the process. Is this normal? Is the tank considered cycled if I'm not seeing any ammonia or nitrite spikes? I know I have to wait for the tank to be more established before I add shrimp anyways I suppose I'm just confused because this hasn't happened before.
5 gallons heavily planted
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0-5ppm
gH: 9
pH: 7.2

 

[Aiken Drum]

Where are you expecting the ammonia to come from? It doesn't just appear in your water, you have to introduce ammonia so the aquarium will cycle. This usually entails adding fish (in your case shrimp) and the ammonia comes from fish waste, or you dose ammonia. Some people use a process called ghost feeding, where they add fish food and the decomposing food adds ammonia into the water.

Either add your shrimp and do a "shrimp" in cycle or dose ammonia and do a "shrimpless" cycle. All you are doing is circulating water and that won't do anything useful.

Shrimp arent very tolerant of poor water quality, so I would do a fishless cycle, which typically takes a couple of months. I can provide a process for a fishless cycle if you need it.

 

[lonksenopa]

I didn't mention that I've been dosing ammonia my bad I usually use a bottled ammonia that I've been using for all of my other tanks

 

[Aiken Drum]

I would check your dosage is correct to bring ammonia up to 2ppm. I would check your test kit is working by both checking the aquarium water immediately after dosing, and also bring 10 litres/ 2.5 gallons of water up to 2ppm in a bucket and test that. The bucket test will also confirm your dosage, as you can multiply up to whatever volume of water you have in your aquarium.

If you are dosing 2ppm of ammonia, the test kit is working properly, and you are seeing zero ammonia in your aquarium 24 hours after dosing then you are cycled. Potentially it's the nitrogen cycle working, or potentially your plants are absorbing all the ammonia before the nitrogen cycle gets a chance. Or a bit of both.

As an added edit. If you are heavily planted you want your nitrate up higher than your test is showing. Your shrimp will likely be producing less nitrogen than your ammonia dosing, so your nitrate levels will probably even lower when you stock your aquarium and stop dosing. Aquarium plants get their nitrogen needs from ammonia and nitrate in the water, and if that's low you may see signs of nutrient deficiency in your plants. If you see those signs, you may want to use an all in one fertiliser that contains a good amount of nitrogen. Your profile says you are US based, so NA Thrive is going to be a good choice. Aquarium Co op does a similar product called easy green. Tropica Specialised Nutrition are other options. Seachem nitrogen can be used alongside whatever general fertiliser you might be using.

You want nitrate up around 10 to 20ppm for the health of your plants.

 

[V227]

Considering a cycled sponge filter was placed into the new 5 gallon setup, that should be more or less an instant cycle.

I've used that method of instant cycling numerous times on much larger tanks. In all cases, I simply added fish immediately after installing the power filter w/ cycled media. Never a problem.

I doubt you'll have any issues if you go ahead and stock the shrimp.

 

[Airborne 82nd]

With all your other tanks. You have all you need to be done yesterday especially with just 5 gallons. Might just do a early water change and use that water.