Fishless cycling please help

Bryson423 · Dec 23, 2021

Hello
I am trying to set up a 20g quarantine tank. I have everything ready to go and was going to try to fishless cycle a couple of times. I added the recommended amount of fluval biological booster bacteria and just one drop per gallon of fish less fuel ammonia (less than the recommended amount of ammonia). It has been about a day in a half and my ammonia has stayed at about 1ppm. My temp is just above 80°F as I read that can speed up the process. I also added a bit more bacteria as it says to on the bottle daily. Do I just need to wait longer? Or am I doing something wrong? Thank you

Bryson423 · Dec 23, 2021

Bryson423 said:
Hello
I am trying to set up a 20g quarantine tank. I have everything ready to go and was going to try to fishless cycle a couple of times. I added the recommended amount of fluval biological booster bacteria and just one drop per gallon of fish less fuel ammonia (less than the recommended amount of ammonia). It has been about a day in a half and my ammonia has stayed at about 1ppm. My temp is just above 80°F as I read that can speed up the process. I also added a bit more bacteria as it says to on the bottle daily. Do I just need to wait longer? Or am I doing something wrong? Thank you

Also do I need to repeat the cycle anymore. Or am I good after the ammonia clears up.

vetteguy53081 · Dec 23, 2021

Bryson423 said:
Also do I need to repeat the cycle anymore. Or am I good after the ammonia clears up.

Once ammonia stable, you can add fish. As for bacteria, you want to add a couple pieces of rubble to allow a place for bacteria to establish. OR even a power filter (hang-on version) with rubble to seed with bacteria)

muzikalmatt · Dec 23, 2021

I'm not familiar with the fluval bacterial booster, so I'm not sure the typical amount of time it takes to establish. If you're struggling to get the ammonia to drop, you might look into trying another bottled bacteria. I've used both Dr. Tim's One & Only and BIOspira with great success. Other people have had good success with the Fritz version as well.

Now that you've confirmed that there is ammonia in the tank, you need to wait for it to drop to zero. At that point, you should see the presence of nitrite and/or nitrates when you test the water as well. Typically you want to wait for nitrites to drop to zero to fully complete the cycle, but nitrites are not as toxic to fish as ammonia so assuming you've confirmed that ammonia has bottomed out and you have nitrates present, you're usually good to go.

Once the ammonia is gone, you do not need to add more. The beneficial bacteria don't need to be "fed" anymore ammonia at that point. If you test your nitrates and they are high (mine were about 30ish when the cycle completed in my 10 gallon), you can do a 50% water change to get them back down to more reasonable levels before adding your first fish.

brandon429 · Dec 23, 2021

surface area and presentation is your challenge in qt cycling not bacteria

this isn't a seneye measurement above and on non digital kits you'll get headaches trying to discern completion status, especially if surface area or presentation is lacking in the design

it doesnt take much liquid ammonia to overpower the kits for days on end, I have collections of these examples for pages its the norm and to not overpower them is the rarity.

post a pic of the setup not the test kit

to assess flow/degree of surface area for a heavy load test. nice job scaling down the initial ammonia input relative to the job, this is feeding bacteria on your surfaces well. add a pinch of ground up fish for for very fast cycle boosting, Dr Reef cycling thread trick...(carbon boost)

you can rely however on deposition timing in cycle prediction always

if it varied, the ten day ammonia drop on all known cycling charts wouldn't be ten days.

in your arrangment, on the 11th day of submersion do a full water change. have the fish food in there bulk of the time

bacteria have covered all surfaces in this time and the water change removes the wastewater not the filter bacteria, in that arrangement above after feeding and the degree of surface area you use and where its placed in the flow scheme determines how many fish that can carry. a pic gives us a basic comparison to qt threads already working as a prediction tool.

the fact your ammonia test seems pegged doesnt apply in the assessment above or the assigned completion date if this was a deadline job.

Bryson423 · Dec 23, 2021

brandon429 said:
surface area and presentation is your challenge in qt cycling not bacteria

this isn't a seneye measurement above and on non digital kits you'll get headaches trying to discern completion status, especially if surface area or presentation is lacking in the design

it doesnt take much liquid ammonia to overpower the kits for days on end, I have collections of these examples for pages its the norm and to not overpower them is the rarity.

post a pic of the setup not the test kit

to assess flow/degree of surface area for a heavy load test. nice job scaling down the initial ammonia input relative to the job, this is feeding bacteria on your surfaces well. add a pinch of ground up fish for for very fast cycle boosting, Dr Reef cycling thread trick...(carbon boost)

you can rely however on deposition timing in cycle prediction always

if it varied, the ten day ammonia drop on all known cycling charts wouldn't be ten days.

in your arrangment, on the 11th day of submersion do a full water change. have the fish food in there bulk of the time

bacteria have covered all surfaces in this time and the water change removes the wastewater not the filter bacteria, in that arrangement above after feeding and the degree of surface area you use and where its placed in the flow scheme determines how many fish that can carry. a pic gives us a basic comparison to qt threads already working as a prediction tool.

the fact your ammonia test seems pegged doesnt apply in the assessment above or the assigned completion date if this was a deadline job.