12 day cycle with DIY wet dry

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R

redchaser

Candiru
MFK Member
Feb 23, 2008
262
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louisiana
www.redchaser.com
Today I read 0 ppm on Amonia and Nitrite, exactly 12 days after adding a fish to my tank to start it cycling. I am using 2 DIY PVC overflow's made of 1 1/4 inch pipe, a 90 quart sterilite container for a sump (the dimensions are similar to 20 long), and stackable sterlite drawers for my trickle filter. I bought a set of stackable drawers that had one shallow drawer of about 2 inches deep, and 2 full size drawers. The shallow drawer holds a fliter pad and acts as my trickle tray. The first large drawer is full of scrubbies, and a liter of matrix media I had hanging around. The second full sized drawer is filled a little more than half way with scrubbies, egg crate over them and filter floss and a blue filter pad on top. About half of the scrubbies in the bottom drawer are submerged. I'm using a quiet one 6000 pump, and with head height and 90's I figure I'm at about 900 gph

It may have cycled a little faster, however I did 2 - 30%water
changes in that time and the only dechlorinator I had was aquamel+ which also is an amonia lock. I've heard that amonia locks may slow cycling. Long story short, it only took my DIY filter one day longer than the Eheim Pro 3 did in the Eheim VS FX5 test that was posted on this forum. I'm pretty happy about that.

Ron
 
lol dude your tank is NOT cycled. you ammonia wont even peak till about the 3rd or 4th week. a full cycle will take 5-6 weeks.

that is unless you used seeded media, which you didnt mention
 
And your nitrAte reading was what?

Without seeding this just doesn't happen, scientifically speaking.

You may have some metaphysics going here.

Dr Joe

.
 
I would bet that your nitrates at the tap are 10ppm as well. And that means that you have not cycled. In a cycle you will get ammonia for a while (days,weeks) before you ever see a nitrite reading. And then you will have both for a while. And then only a nitrite reading for a while. All the while the nitrate is on the rise. ---------what size tank is it? and what fish are you cycling with? And what is your tap nitrate reading? And on that test i would call BS or they did some major seeding. Or they raised the ammonia level once to that ppm and then did not add anymore. To cycle a tank or filter you need a daily feeding of ammonia. If you want to test your tank to see if it is cycled add some pure ammonia to it. Like 1 drop for every 2-3 gallons and then wait 18 hrs and check your parameters. If the ammonia and nitrite are zero and the nitrate had a major rise then you are cycled.
 
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