scubaboy1126
Aquarium Advice Newbie
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2014
- Messages
- 7
Hi there.
I just bought a new 60 gallon tank and although I am not new to the hobby, I am new to the world of fishless cycling. I started my fishless cycle back on October 4th and I was using the thread "fishless cycling for dummies" of this website (old thread found from a google search). My parameters were when I started was:
Ammonia: 5 - 6 ppm (hard to tell as the color is hard to distinguish and its also hard to tell because I am partially color blind, but my wife confirms the colors for me. I used the ACE hardware store brand (which is about 10% water). I used this because I found numerous websites that people used this brand.
I did put marineland water conditioner in prior to adding ammonia to dechlorinate the water. I bought marineland test strips to test for chlorine alkalinity and such and eceything looked good on the strips.
The thread said that nitrites should be visible around the end of the first week. I started checking for nitrites on Wednesday October 8th and have not seen any to this day.
To this day ammonia still remains at 5.0 -6.0 ppm and no nitrites.
I have no plants in my tank because I plan on using live plant bulbs and don't want to risk messing them up.
I started checking my ph level late last week and its been about 7.8. I raised the temperature in the tank from 82 to 86 because I found out that the nitries like warmer water and still nothing.
I don't know what else to do because nothing is changing in my cycle. I was thinking about doing a 30 - 50 percent water change just to get the ammonia level back down and start again, but first I thought I would put a post on here to see if maybe I could get some confidence not to do that and that there is something that may help correct it. Any advice would be a big help.
Thank You
I just bought a new 60 gallon tank and although I am not new to the hobby, I am new to the world of fishless cycling. I started my fishless cycle back on October 4th and I was using the thread "fishless cycling for dummies" of this website (old thread found from a google search). My parameters were when I started was:
Ammonia: 5 - 6 ppm (hard to tell as the color is hard to distinguish and its also hard to tell because I am partially color blind, but my wife confirms the colors for me. I used the ACE hardware store brand (which is about 10% water). I used this because I found numerous websites that people used this brand.
I did put marineland water conditioner in prior to adding ammonia to dechlorinate the water. I bought marineland test strips to test for chlorine alkalinity and such and eceything looked good on the strips.
The thread said that nitrites should be visible around the end of the first week. I started checking for nitrites on Wednesday October 8th and have not seen any to this day.
To this day ammonia still remains at 5.0 -6.0 ppm and no nitrites.
I have no plants in my tank because I plan on using live plant bulbs and don't want to risk messing them up.
I started checking my ph level late last week and its been about 7.8. I raised the temperature in the tank from 82 to 86 because I found out that the nitries like warmer water and still nothing.
I don't know what else to do because nothing is changing in my cycle. I was thinking about doing a 30 - 50 percent water change just to get the ammonia level back down and start again, but first I thought I would put a post on here to see if maybe I could get some confidence not to do that and that there is something that may help correct it. Any advice would be a big help.
Thank You