Setting up my 400 gallon tank and doing my first fishless cycle just want to make sure I'm doing this correctly.. I dosed ammonia to get the levels to about 4mg/l. Now I wait until it goes to zero and nitrite levels spike. My question is once my ammonia reaches zero do I continue to dose ammonia or do I wait until both ammonia and nitrite are both zero before I dose again.
Fishless cycle help
- Thread starter turbo20v
- Start date
Keep redosing with ammonia to 4ppm UNTIL you start showing nitrites, then dose the ammonia to 2ppm when it zeroes out. After your ammonia and nitrites zero out, do a massive water change to remove nitrates. The slowest part is colonizing the BB that consumes the nitrite--it can take a few weeks. Be patient, it will happen. Here's a chart I made to record my readings and dosing while cycling my 300 gallon tank. I measured the ammonia before and after adding to the tank.
yup, keep re dosing until ammonia stays at 0, and nitrite stays at 0. showing nitrate, keep up the dosing until the day or day before adding fish, do the large water change and add the fish, they will supply the ammonia after that. and great job on cycling a tank before adding fish, 
Be very generous with your bacterial additive. (A little extra won't hurt ) I've heard good things about Stability and also Dr. Tim's One and Only
+1, I've never had to actually do the long painful process of fishless cycling after I discovered stability...4 days and the tanks cycled, fish in the whole time.
Im on day two of stability but i still have ammonia readings at 4ppm im reluctant to put my fish in there. I don't want to risk them at this point I've been planing this tank build for a long time a few weeks wont kill me i guess. I appreciate the help.
ya if you are dosing ammonia don't add fish lol. I don't add any additional ammonia when I do it, I let the fish make it haha.
I found that cycle WITH fish at times takes even longer thank fishless if you have a low fish stock to volume of water. Simply fishes aren't producing enough waste quickly for ammonia. In a fishless cycle, you can bump up ammonia as needed.
Good call, given that you have 400 gallon.
Good call, given that you have 400 gallon.