am on my 4th day of fishless cycling. I dosed the tank with ammonia to 5ppm then next day dosed it with bio-spira. Today I decided to test the water (using Aqua farm test kit)and heres what i got ammonia 3ppm, nitrite 0.25ppm and for nitrAte the color was almost orange(5.0ppm) so u figure some where in between 0 and 5 but it definitely wasnt yellow(0ppm). everything double checked.Question is am i heading in the right direction?? And Since the ammonia is at 3ppm should i wait untill it drops to 0ppm for me to dose it back to up
4th day of fishless cycle
- Thread starter ahfu25
- Start date
Letsgometsreyes;537675; said:
Well, you arent really doing the fishless cycle the way i am familiar with.
Usually when you have Bio-Spira, they recommend adding that along with all your fish without needing to cycle first.
The way i am accustomed to is,
Adding 4-5 drops of ammonia for each 10 gallons every day.
You will then get a reading for Ammonia,
Once you have ammonia spiking high, keep adding the same amount of ammonia each day.
One you have a NitrIte spike of around 3-5 ppm, cut your ammonia additions in half.
Keep adding ammonia every day (at half the original dosage) until the ammonia and NitrItes drop to Zero.
Once these two readings drop to Zero, you will innevitably have a High reading for NitrAtes. Usually around 40-80 ppm.
You then do a large water change of about 80% WITHOUT vacuuming the gravel (just removing water).
After the water change, the nitrates should drop to tolerable levels (around 10-20 ppm) and you are ready for fish.
Entire process usually takes a couple of weeks.
I would say you are a little less than half way there. Once your Nitrites spike higher, you can cut your ammonia additions in half and you'll be on the last stretch of the cycle.
