Fishless cycle with Ammonia

M

mattyg18

New member
I just started my fishes cycle 3 days ago adding pure ammonia on day 1 to 3ppm. The next morning added a bottle of BioSpira and noticed the ammonia level dropped back down to .5ppm. Added more ammonia to 3ppm and the next morning it dropped back down to .5 again. Seems every morning so far its dropping down.

My question is am I supposed to keep adding ammonia every day? And if so how long should I do this for?

From what i'm reading I can't find the frequency of how often to add.

I am using Live bagged sand, and 50 lbs dry rock which I cured in a separate tub prior to the cycle. I'm running a 60gal cube tank with 15 gallon sump. No protein skimmer yet. And I have a powerhead running so the tank has great circulation.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.
 
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No, you only need to add the ammonia once, then wait on your nitrites to spike and go down to 0. The more ammonia you add now the more nitrates you will have to get rid of after your cycle is complete. By adding more ammonia now you are delaying the cycle actually. However, once your cycle is complete where you have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites you want to test your cycle by dosing ammonia up to 3ppm then check your ammonia and nitrites 24 hours after adding them. You should have 0 nitrites and ammonia after 24 hrs. If this happens your cycle is complete and you can add your CUC.
 
Thanks Dkuhlmann. I just read elsewhere that you need to keep adding ammonia to feed the bacteria. Does that make sense? Its contrary to what you are saying that ammonia only needs to be added once. What do you think about that?
 
mattyg18 said:
Thanks Dkuhlmann. I just read elsewhere that you need to keep adding ammonia to feed the bacteria. Does that make sense? Its contrary to what you are saying that ammonia only needs to be added once. What do you think about that?
Click to expand...

+1, absolutely do not add additional ammonia. The posts claiming you should are completely wrong and anyone advising you to do so should be ignored. As Dk advised, adding more ammonia will prolong the cycle and leave you with much higher than necessary nitrates at the end of the cycle. The bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrites and nitrites to nitrates can live over a year without food (ammonia and nitrites).
 
Thanks thegrun and DK. Im glad I checked with you guys. I did add ammonia for two additional days so I guess the cycle will take a bit longer than it should but not much I can do now. I suppose its a good thing that the ammonia is processing so quickly or is that normal? I know when I cured my dry rock the ammonia level was so high and it lasted for days. And i didn't even add any ammonia. That came from the dead stuff on the rock.
 
Yes the ammonia part is the fastest one, the nitrites will hang up for as much as 2 weeks or more. But when it falls to 0 it happens all of a sudden

One thing about us here, we'll never steer you wrong on anything. We have nothing to gain accept seeing you succeed with your tank!
 
Appreciate it fellas...

So now do I need to add anything else? I was going to pick up a few pieces of live rock to seed my rock. Is that a good idea? And how about dry fish food or anything like that?

Also is it necessary to do water changes? And if so how often?

Sorry for the questions. I'm just new at this and not sure exactly what to do yet. Everything is read contradicts each other and i'm just sticking to this forum for now.

Thanks again!
 
I only use dry fish food, no ammonia. If you are using ammonia, you don't need the fish food.
 
No water changes are necessary until the cycle is complete. Once complete, you'll want to do a significant water change (50% or more). That will drop your nitrates down some and reduce anything that may have leached out of your rocks/sand.

-Ivan
 
Nitrite is what you should be focusing on now. Don't stop measuring ammonia, but now you need to measure nitrite and watch for it to spike and then fall, and stay, at zero, along with ammonia.
 
Hello, I just bought my third tank in the last month or two...it seems addictive. I always want a bigger one...wish I'd have know all about all the problems small tanks have before I wasted all this money. ; (
 
My Nitrites are a bit high in my 29 bio cube. I only have 3 small fish (2 very small cardinal gobies and a tiny and mean black damsel in it now. I noticed the nitrites getting
higher in the last two days but for about a month it housed the 2 gobies with no problems.
I then put in an appears to be "melting" or "shedding" purple sea plume (with a white slug that seems to be eating it) into the tank and since then the nitrites have gone up?
Oh--I also stocked the tank with (copepods) about 150 2x, for a mandarin goby that a LFS told me ate brine shrimp. He didn't. Or if he did I never saw it? Anyway I took the mandarin out yesterday as even after a 20% water change the nitrites are still high. I put him in my tall 20 gallon hexagon tank that houses 3 seahorses. I've had them for about two months now. Obviously I didn't know what I was doing when I began this hobby and still feel very intimidated by all the information. Any suggestions would be great.
I know I'm rambling but I've got soooooo many questions that I don't know where to start.
First: Should I take the cardinal gobies out of the "nitrite" high tank before they die until
I can possibly get the levels okay in the 29 bio cube?
Second: Will the mandarin goby ever eat? The alleged "copepods" I spent a small fortune on seem quite large and fast! Almost too fast for a sluggish Mandarin? Or do these fish come alive at night and feast on the pods? As others have said -- I've seen the pods all around him at times...during the day...on the sand bottom and he walks right over them? I say walks---these fish seem to "walk" more than swim!
 
Thanks Happy Schneider for responding so quickly (and for responding period) I didn't think anybody was really on here? I didn't mention that I first put in dead porous rock called Tonga ? I think? It looks like an off white larva rock. The LFS said it was the best and not to put any live in (of course they did not sell live) Then I stocked the tank with copepods (that I didn't actually see any of in the bottle of green sludge they came in?)
After this...I restocked from another LFS that bragged how they didn't sell pods that you couldn't see. For $10 I got a lot of these horrible little bugs. (pretty big too...about 1/8 inch at least) I discovered to my horror when I opened the bag and they ran up my hand! Yuck! I'm used to them now. Anyway...when I put them in my tank they all zoomed into the many holes in the porous "dead" rock and hid. I felt so bad for the Mandarin as I was sure he didn't get any. I figured the rock was too porous. So I removed it and put it into my seahorse tank. Then I got some "live" rock from another LFS and restocked with another batch of pods. I was careful to pick rock that didn't have a lot of holes and crevices for the pods to disappear into. Now I started seeing pods actually crawling around on the sand right in front of the Mandarin. He didn't even blink? Perhaps they don't eat this type of pod? I do no know. I swear--I only bought this fish as the LFS encouraged me that it would eat the "live brine" shrimp that I feed my seahorses, and that it was a good tank mate for them as it is very passive.
I also set up a little aquarium with some live mangroves and other saltwater plants. I added some of the pods to it as well hoping they may reproduce. In the meantime I think my Mandarin is starving? I put him into the tank with the Seahorses yesterday...where I ditched the porous rock that the first batch of pods escape to. This is very very stressful.
 
Can't help you with the mandarin, I just don't have any experience. I remember I read a thread about someone training the mandarin to eat brine shrimp but I doubt I would find it again.

It will get easier, that is for sure. But the most important tip I ever got is take it slowly (I probably took it too slow but that is another issue ;).

Give the pods time to reproduce, I'm sure there will be plenty eventually.
 
A healthy mandarin will require a very large tank to let him share with seahorses, because he can eat something over 9,000 pods a day. That he won't eat indicates not-healthy.
 
I used 25ml of ammonia to get my level to around 3ppm. Maybe a few drops more.

And a HUGE thanks to everyone who helped out with this thread.

I picked up 5 lbs of live rock to seed my 50lbs of dry rock, and 1 lb of live rock for my sump along with some rubble that I've got in there already. Now just sitting back and waiting....
 
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