Is my aquarium cycled?

[KatieFishface]

Hi guys, new to the forum and have been scouring the net for some help with a fishless cycle!

I have been following Dr Tim's process for fishless cycling and I am a bit confused at what counts as a cycled aquarium as have read conflicting information online

The guide I am following suggests "When you can add 2 ppm ammonia and BOTH ammonia and nitrite are below 0.2 ppm the next day your tank is cycled"

However I have read elsewhere that a tank is cycled when the readings are 0 in 24 hours. On another Dr Tim's guide it suggests the readings for both should be below 0.5 in 24 hours so I am a little confused as to when I can confidently say the tank has been cycled

For info this is my first aquarium and I am prepping for an axolotl so don't want to make any mistakes. Currently I am seeing 24 hours after adding ammonia readings are around 0.25 ammonia, 0.25 Nitrites (I am using a freshwater master test kit so hard to always get exact colour matches) Just wondering if it's close to completing or not! Any help appreciated as I want to get this right.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Aiken Drum]

Id work with cycling 2ppm of ammonia out to zero ammonia and nitrite in 24 hours. If 2ppm is dropping to 0.25ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm nitrite in 24 hours you are probably only a few days away.

In reality 0.25ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm nitrite is going to be harmless, but you arent cycled. And your axolotl isn't going to produce anything like 2ppm ammonia in a day either. It really depends how risk averse you are. You arent far off finishing the process properly.

The ammonia test can often appear to be 0.25ppm ammonia when in fact it's zero. Get some bottled spring water that will be zero and test that. If the result looks the same as the 0.25ppm from the aquarium you have zero ammonia.

 

[Andy Sager]

To help you visually, this is a picture of the cycling process in graph form:
As you can see, the ammonia and nitrite levels will go up then down and the nitrate level will go up. So a " cycled" tank is when the ammonia and nitrite levels have gone up and back down to zero AND the nitrate level is rising. This is why it's important to know that your source water does not have ammonia or nitrate in it before you start ( or if it does contain one or both, you know the levels so that you see when the levels are higher than what was in the source water. )
The next thing to understand is that when a tank finishes cycling, it means that there are enough nitrifying microbes present to consume and convert the amount of ammonia production in the tank at that time. Since you are doing a fishless cycling, it means enough microbes are present to convert 2ppm of ammonia and subsequent nitrite. What happens after that is the microbe bed ( a.k.a. the Biological filter bed) is that this bed will grow and shrink all based on the amount of ammonia present. That means that if your fish load ( including fish , amphibian, crustacean, etc) produces less than 2 ppm of ammonia combined, that nitrifying bed will shrink. If your combined ammonia production is more than 2 ppm, the bed will need to grow and that will take some time so it's important to test for ammonia and nitrite to keep those levels in tolerable levels through water changes until the bed catches up.

Hope this helps.

 

[KatieFishface]

Id work with cycling 2ppm of ammonia out to zero ammonia and nitrite in 24 hours. If 2ppm is dropping to 0.25ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm nitrite in 24 hours you are probably only a few days away.

In reality 0.25ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm nitrite is going to be harmless, but you arent cycled. And your axolotl isn't going to produce anything like 2ppm ammonia in a day either. It really depends how risk averse you are. You arent far off finishing the process properly.

The ammonia test can often appear to be 0.25ppm ammonia when in fact it's zero. Get some bottled spring water that will be zero and test that. If the result looks the same as the 0.25ppm from the aquarium you have zero ammonia.

Thank you for this advice this is all good to know. I will keep it going until I have full confidence it's cycled. Would rather not risk anything. Thanks for that tip about tasting the spring water as well. Will give that a shot just to compare

 

[KatieFishface]

To help you visually, this is a picture of the cycling process in graph form: View attachment 390418
As you can see, the ammonia and nitrite levels will go up then down and the nitrate level will go up. So a " cycled" tank is when the ammonia and nitrite levels have gone up and back down to zero AND the nitrate level is rising. This is why it's important to know that your source water does not have ammonia or nitrate in it before you start ( or if it does contain one or both, you know the levels so that you see when the levels are higher than what was in the source water. )
The next thing to understand is that when a tank finishes cycling, it means that there are enough nitrifying microbes present to consume and convert the amount of ammonia production in the tank at that time. Since you are doing a fishless cycling, it means enough microbes are present to convert 2ppm of ammonia and subsequent nitrite. What happens after that is the microbe bed ( a.k.a. the Biological filter bed) is that this bed will grow and shrink all based on the amount of ammonia present. That means that if your fish load ( including fish , amphibian, crustacean, etc) produces less than 2 ppm of ammonia combined, that nitrifying bed will shrink. If your combined ammonia production is more than 2 ppm, the bed will need to grow and that will take some time so it's important to test for ammonia and nitrite to keep those levels in tolerable levels through water changes until the bed catches up.

Hope this helps.

This is such a great explanation of how it all works thank you. So much information online it's a bit of an info overload so I appreciate this!

 

[Andy Sager]

This is such a great explanation of how it all works thank you. So much information online it's a bit of an info overload so I appreciate this!

Yeah, sadly there is a lot of information online and responses to the info that argue points rather than understand the process. It doesn't matter whether it's a bacteria or a "soma" or a " spira" etc. What matters is we are encouraging a THING ( 2 things actually) to grow in the system to convert ammonia into nitrite and then nitrite into nitrate. This is why you will see we often refer to these " things" as microbes because that is more encompassing. No one can argue there. LOL These microbes have certain demands that need to be met in order to exist and grow. The #1 demand is ammonia in some form then comes the other demands of KH, pH and temperature.
When I worked in pet stores, I would encourage new aquarists to chart their tank's cycling progress and to look at the graph as drawing a Bactrian ( 2 humped) Camel. The nitrates was the neck and head. The ammonia and nitrites were the humps. They always got this: " Your tank isn't finished cycling until the neck is getting stretched higher than the Camel's humps. " ( By that time, the nitrite level should be at or near zero again. )

 

[Airborne 82nd]

Are they Critically Endangered??