Below results are taking 5 days apart closest to camera are from this morning. At day 15 I added Turbo Start 700 thats when I started to see nitrites in test. Tank system is 700 gallons. Average temp 80
Day 26 Fishless cycle how close am I to finishig it
- Thread starter M3AN ONE
- Start date
Nothing beats time and tester fish IMO… around a month for systems 500g+ seems pretty normal time to me if ur starting with all new/clean media. Gotta get it dirty to get it going. Id imagine ull re cycle a bit whenever u put life in. Even when just re starting systems i never put in the actual fish i plan to keep 1st. Most will survive the cycle sure… not worth it not to test with cheapies 1st just to be sure ur not losing money or something u might not be able to get again.
I was going to do 200 gallon water changes a day for the first month and add two 12 inch stingrays, one 12 inch gar, one 8 inch TSN and 1 5 inch chines perch. Is this ambitious?
Only thing that looked like it changed is the Ammonia so Nitrite is breaking down the Ammonia. Still no increase in Nitrate. Adding more Dr Tims Ammonium and turbo start to see if we can expedite Nitrites converting waste to Nitrate. Also to note had too add about 50 gallons of dechlorinated and RO water to tank due to evaporation. Temps in tank also went down to about 74 so that might have slowed things down while I was working on the tank. Also added some top floating plants.
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Looks like your getting there. Nitrite spiking great sign. Shake those nitrate reagents bottles well.
Looks to me like you've got "at least" another 2 weeks or more of cycling before you can add the fish you've listed.
They will produce a lot of bio-waste almost immediately, so unless the tank is totally cycled, and ready for the on-coming glut, that amount of waste could easily overwhelm the system, unless the bacteria are prepared for that heavy bioload.
Adding a few extra drops of ammonia at this point to see the chemical reactions, would not be out of line.
They will produce a lot of bio-waste almost immediately, so unless the tank is totally cycled, and ready for the on-coming glut, that amount of waste could easily overwhelm the system, unless the bacteria are prepared for that heavy bioload.
Adding a few extra drops of ammonia at this point to see the chemical reactions, would not be out of line.
Just be patient. When I fishless cycled our tank, getting the nitrites to drop took the longest time. The good news is that once the nitrite consuming bacteria colonized and the nitrites dropped to 0, I never ever had another nitrite reading. You do have to keep feeding ammonia at a reduced level until the only reading you get is for nitrates. I did get an ammonia spike once after feeding copious, unlimited amounts of watermelon to my fish, but never had a nitrite reading.