Haha, a little bit happy tears. I don’t mind them most of the time and they’re still in my 10 but this tank is on my bedside table and I’ve found in the last few weeks I find it somewhat aggravating to see little snail specs on the glass when I glance over.
So I decided not to cycle with media from the 29 just in case so I know that the tank is 100% sterilized and fresh. All hard scape/plants/media etc were bleached. Then I overdosed with safe mixed up the sand a bunch and let it run for a bit to ensure the bleach was gone.
I had an old bottle of stability which I have used to jump start cycles before but it was expired by a year. My new bottle hadn’t come yet so I just emptied like half a bottle of the stuff into the tank. Just emptied it since I was going to toss it anyway, if nothing else it’ll be an ammonia source from dead bacteria. 100% water change that night to get rid of the extra safe and presumably dead bacteria and tossed in some algae pellets to let it do it’s thing. (I’m such a technical fishless cycler aren’t I!) For kicks and giggles I tested the water today just to see. It’s been what... two days. Surely not much going on, yeah?
I just checked ammonia first, to see if I should add more food. Zero.
Okay that’s weird. There’s a small pile of food in this tank no way ammonia is actually zero. Checked again. Zero. (The test kit is relatively new and shows slight positive from treated tap from the chloramines so I know it’s good.)
So I check nitrites. Zero nitrites. I mean I wasn’t expecting them this early anyway.
Ok this is stupid but... checks nitrates.
Wouldn’t you know it I have nitrates. I checked against tap and the tank is noticeably producing nitrates already.
Dang.
So there’s my unexpected tidbit for the day. My memoir will be titled ‘how to do everything wrong and still get a cycled tank in three days.’