Fishless cycle: waiting for ammonia?

[riccinbru]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to post a quick question about a fishless cycle. Tank parameters: 20 gallons, planted, pH 7.6 or higher (have to go get the higher-level test kit, this one's maxed out), ammonia reading, practically nil, and has been since the beginning.

The tank's been set up for just over four weeks now. We threw a raw shrimp in the first day, and it started decomposing beautifully. No ammonia readings using a Hagan Nutrafin liquid regeant kit. Discovered hitchhiker snails, and let them stay, lay eggs, let the eggs hatch, all the while cringing about the effect on the plants. No ammonia readings. Tried putting some flake food in to decompose every day for a week. Still no readings. Now the shrimp is all gone, so is the flake, we've got tons of little snails snacking on the plants, and we're just barely getting some ammonia readings, but still in the green zone according to the test kit. It certainly isn't a spike.

I'm having trouble finding pure ammonia to put into the tank, but I was wondering if I should keep looking for it, or just keep waiting for the ammonia spike. I don't really want to put starter fish in; I want this to work. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

-Vanessa

 

[rich311k]

How heavily planted is the tank? What kinds of plants are they and are they growing well? My first thought is the plants are using up the Ammonia faster than the shrimp produced it. Do you have a picture? You may be able to avoid cycling altogether if you stock slowly.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

i agree with rich, check your nitrite and nitrate levels as well... if your nitrates are up, your cycle could be almost complete, but you never saw a spike. On the other hand, if you have nitrates in your tap water, you might get a false positive on that theory

 

[fishygurl]

IMO the nutrafin test kit sucks. When i was doing a fishless cycle, it said that the ammonia was .6 but it was really 5!

 

[riccinbru]

Hi everyone, thanks for your replies thus far.

I have the nitrite test kit only at this point, but I'll have time tomorrow to go out and purchase the nitrate and higher pH kit, so I'll reply with those results tomorrow night.

Ammonia is still negligible, and nitrItes don't test at all either.

The tank is planted with vallisneria spiralis (half of which isn't doing so well), Echinodorus amazonicus (seems to be doing okay, but getting some brown spots), Cryptocoryne wendtii red (which is doing fine) and hornwort (which I keep having to cull because it's doing so well). I will try to post a picture soon. It's filtered with an Aquaclear 50 set to lowest speed.

I'll update tomorrow with the actual pH and nitrate tests. Failing a reading, I'll take a sample to my LFS for testing.

-Vanessa

 

[rich311k]

If you have been doing this for four weeks and you have been adding food everyday I think you may never see a spike. Try putting a big pinch of flakes in and see what happens. I think your hornwort as well as the other plants are keeping up with the amount of ammonia you are producing. If it stays the way even after adding a larger portion of flakes you may want to try adding a few fish, but add extra food and wait at least another week.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Also, with it planted with the plants you have, you may never even see the cycle, as the plants are taking in the ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. Also, you might want to go to the planted section and post about the plant with the brown spots to see if someone can help you tell what you might need to add, as there might be a deficiency of something.

 

[Graybeard]

I read on the site that Ace Hardware had 10% ammonia, I checked and they did in my town.

I took a whiff to see if it was really stronger than grocery store ammonia...stupid stupid stupid

I've been trying for 13 years to convince my wife that we don't need 101 different types of cleaning products to take care of one house. I can clean the house with 3, ammonia, 409 and simple green. I can now narrow my list down to 1 8)

 

[StngStr]

you could try to put 1 fish in there and see what happens with the ammonia.