Ammonia level during cycling process

ElitePirate · Jun 13, 2019

Hi friends,

Before I start I must tell I've read a lot of articles about cycling. So just to start - I have to maintain the ammonia param around 3-5ppm until i can detect nitrite and then stop adding ammonia source. Is that correct?

xnguven · Jun 13, 2019

ElitePirate said:
Hi friends,

Before I start I must tell I've read a lot of articles about cycling. So just to start - I have to maintain the ammonia param around 3-5ppm until i can detect nitrite and then stop adding ammonia source. Is that correct?

Hey Elite,

Sounds like you are doing a fishless cycle so yeah you want to keep your ammonia no more than 5ppm once you detect nitrites, it won’t be long till you detect nitrates as well. If you are using seachem prime, the prime will bind the ammonia for roughly 48 hours making it less toxic and allowing your beneficial bacteria to thrive. Did you add a bottle of beneficial bacteria yet?

ScottR · Jun 13, 2019

ElitePirate said:
Hi friends,

Before I start I must tell I've read a lot of articles about cycling. So just to start - I have to maintain the ammonia param around 3-5ppm until i can detect nitrite and then stop adding ammonia source. Is that correct?

You only need to add ammonia once. And you’re not trying to maintain it. The bacteria will break the ammonia down into nitrites and then break those down into nitrates. Most people aim to keep these three at -ammonia 0 nitrites 0 and nitrates <10. I’ve read fritz Turbostart 900 is really good bacteria to add. I’ve never used it however.

xnguven · Jun 13, 2019

ScottR said:
You only need to add ammonia once. And you’re not trying to maintain it. The bacteria will break the ammonia down into nitrites and then break those down into nitrates. Most people aim to keep these three at -ammonia 0 nitrites 0 and nitrates <10. I’ve read fritz Turbostart 900 is really good bacteria to add. I’ve never used it however.

Haven’t got the chance to use turbostart yet but another choice you can use is instant ocean bio spira, that’s what I used when I was starting my tank. When you buy it though you would want to double check the expiration date on the bottle to be sure they are alive, but with how they ship and handle the product they might be dead already by the time you buy them. Adding live rocks helped me cycle my tank quicker

ScottR · Jun 13, 2019

xnguven said:
Haven’t got the chance to use turbostart yet but another choice you can use is instant ocean bio spira, that’s what I used when I was starting my tank. When you buy it though you would want to double check the expiration date on the bottle to be sure they are alive, but with how they ship and handle the product they might be dead already by the time you buy them. Adding live rocks helped me cycle my tank quicker

I cycled all my tanks with live rock. Fish-less and ammonia-less. Many ways to cycle. And with the great bottles bacteria these days, it makes cycling easier and faster. Lots of threads on here

ElitePirate · Jun 13, 2019

xnguven said:
Hey Elite,

Sounds like you are doing a fishless cycle so yeah you want to keep your ammonia no more than 5ppm once you detect nitrites, it won’t be long till you detect nitrates as well. If you are using seachem prime, the prime will bind the ammonia for roughly 48 hours making it less toxic and allowing your beneficial bacteria to thrive. Did you add a bottle of beneficial bacteria yet?

Hi @xnguven thanks for the reply. Yes, im using a fishless cycle (just because i dnt like the idea of letting them get hurt during this process) so im using the good old shrimp method haha. I added a bit of shrimp, added "biodigest" bacteria and then monitoring now. Weird part is its almost 4 days now and my ammonia level is just around 0.1 ppm. I know I should allow some time but I cannot measure exactly how much i need to add because im using food/shrimp method.. So just because its too low, im not sure if i should add more food so that it can create more ammonia or not...

ScottR said:
You only need to add ammonia once.

hmm it's contradicting with a lot of articles I read @ScottR. Most of them mentioned that i should add fish food every 2-3 days to keep up the ammonia param..

ScottR · Jun 13, 2019

ElitePirate said:
Hi @xnguven thanks for the reply. Yes, im using a fishless cycle (just because i dnt like the idea of letting them get hurt during this process) so im using the good old shrimp method haha. I added a bit of shrimp, added "biodigest" bacteria and then monitoring now. Weird part is its almost 4 days now and my ammonia level is just around 0.1 ppm. I know I should allow some time but I cannot measure exactly how much i need to add because im using food/shrimp method.. So just because its too low, im not sure if i should add more food so that it can create more ammonia or not...

hmm it's contradicting with a lot of articles I read @ScottR. Most of them mentioned that i should add fish food every 2-3 days to keep up the ammonia param..

I would believe this is to test that your system can handle the extra ammonia. Because once you put a fish in, you’ll inevitably have ammonia. When you put ammonia in, the bacteria should be immediately going to work.

xnguven · Jun 13, 2019

ElitePirate said:
Hi @xnguven thanks for the reply. Yes, im using a fishless cycle (just because i dnt like the idea of letting them get hurt during this process) so im using the good old shrimp method haha. I added a bit of shrimp, added "biodigest" bacteria and then monitoring now. Weird part is its almost 4 days now and my ammonia level is just around 0.1 ppm. I know I should allow some time but I cannot measure exactly how much i need to add because im using food/shrimp method.. So just because its too low, im not sure if i should add more food so that it can create more ammonia or not...

hmm it's contradicting with a lot of articles I read @ScottR. Most of them mentioned that i should add fish food every 2-3 days to keep up the ammonia param..

No problem Elite! It’s hard to measure how much food you want to add to create a certain amount of ammonia so most people use a bottle of ammonia and measure it out from there so it takes the guess work from adding fish food. If you are detecting ammonia though you want to do a nitrite test to see how the cycle is going so far. Also no harm in adding a little more fish food to help speed up the process as you are doing a fishless cycle. Raising the temperature up to 80-85 degrees will also help speed up beneficial bacteria growth.