Help with fishless cycling

[Fishy fiend]

Hi all,

Apologies if you have already seen this on another forum, I am looking for as much advice as I can get.

I am fairly new to this and any help is greatly appreciated.

I have recently got a 54L tank and have decided to cycle it with no fish.

The first thing I did was to set it all up, crank the heat up to 80f and started to introduce pure ammonia into it. 2 days into the process a friend of mine was changing his filter sponge so gave it to my for my tank along with 1.5L of water from his tank.

I put the water straight in and put the filter sponge (different shape to mine) under the filter and
As close to the water intake as I could.

I have done a lot of reading on the subject and know how the nitrogen cycle works but am concerned as it does not seem to be going to plan.

Firstly the ammonia - upon setting up the tank, I introduced 2.5ml of pure 9.5% ammonia to bring the PPM up to around 5. I am now a week into the cycle and the shade of green is getting gradually lighter but Not my much. (I was hoping for a faster tunraound with the sponge from the other tank). Is this normal?

Secondly the nitrites - this is currently at 2ppm. I was under the impression that nitrites would only start forming once the tank could break down 5ppm of ammonia in 8-12 hours but we are already showing nitrites after a week and ammonia is still quite high. Could this be due to the sponge or the tank water I used?

Lastly the nitrates - currently at 40ppm. This seemed a little high to me after 7 days and therefore I did some tests on my tap water which came out at around the same ppm. I then tested some bottled mineral water which came out at 0ppm just to check that my test was working. It would appear that my water has high levels of nitirates and I was just wondering if that was a problem at this stage? Ie will it have a detrimental effect on the cycling process and also whether or not it was a problem after cycling for the well-being of my fish.

All in all, I just wanted to know if I am on the right track or whether I need to change what I am doing. Since adding the first dose of ammonia a week ago I have not needed to add any more as it has remained high (getting gradually lighter with each test).

I really appreciate any help and apologies for the Rambling post.

Thanks

 

[librarygirl]

HI and welcome!

You dechlorinated the water prior to putting it into the tank, right? What did you use?

Have you tested PH? If Ph drops under 7 it can stall the cycle some, so you might want to keep an eye on it.

Have you tested your tap water for nitrite? If it has none or less than what's in the tank then yes it could be coming from the seeded sponge.

A week isn't very long, even with seeded media (depending on how much you used, it probably has some bacteria on it but probably not enough to sustain 4 ppms of ammonia so the bacteria need to multiply and that can take some time).

The nitrates aren't an issue right now, so don't worry about those.

Also what test kit are you using? If you're using strips they can be inaccurate.

 

[Fishy fiend]

HI and welcome!

You dechlorinated the water prior to putting it into the tank, right? What did you use?

Have you tested PH? If Ph drops under 7 it can stall the cycle some, so you might want to keep an eye on it.

Have you tested your tap water for nitrite? If it has none or less than what's in the tank then yes it could be coming from the seeded sponge.

A week isn't very long, even with seeded media (depending on how much you used, it probably has some bacteria on it but probably not enough to sustain 4 ppms of ammonia so the bacteria need to multiply and that can take some time).

The nitrates aren't an issue right now, so don't worry about those.

Also what test kit are you using? If you're using strips they can be inaccurate.

Thanks for getting back to me library girl.

I used API stress coat to dechlorinate the water when I set it up a week ago.

There are no nitrites in my tap water and the current PH of the tank is 8.2, is that too high??

I have bought the API master test kit (the one with the liquid bottles and the test tubes).

Moving forward, I'm guessing I just leave it be and wait for the ammonia to fall?

At what point should I add more Ammonia? and what should I aim to dose it up to?

Thanks again for the help

 

[librarygirl]

Sounds like you have it covered. Your PH is fine. I'd give it more time. When ammonia drops to <2 then you can add enough to get it back up to 4.