We need a sticky on here that tells all about fishless cycling and why. The first few post are completely wrong, I have to be honest here for the sake of misinformation getting passed around. ----------------------------------------OK the basis of a fish less cycle is to grow enough bacteria to support a full bio load of fish. That is why no matter what size tank you are cycling you must add enough ammonia to get 4ppm. 4ppm of ammonia is what a fully loaded tank will have to cycle on a daily basis on average. You can cycle a tank by adding 1ppm of ammonia daily if you wanted but it will only handle 1/4 of a full bio load at first until the bacteria has colonized up to full potential. So yes once you have cycled your tank by adding 4ppm or a little more ammonia daily. It is ready for a full stock of fish. You just have to make sure that the test readings are zero's for ammonia and nitrite 12-18 hours after the 4ppm of ammonia has been added. Once your tank does this for a few days you are ready to do a major water change like 80-100% and then you must stock the tank with in a few hours to no more than a day. So that the bio-filter does not starve and die off. i would recommend using aqua safe start to start the bacteria off instead of stability. I have used both many times and stability does absolutely nothing. When I used safe start I had nitrite readings after 1 day. So that tells us that safe start has the first part of our bacteria in it and ready to go. I just cycled my 125 using safe start and 5ppm ammonia in 2 weeks. And to test the cycled I add 6ppm of ammonia and in 12 hrs i had .25 nitrite readings and that was it. Safe start is good stuff.
Is this bio-load too much?
- Thread starter dianas
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