Ok so some of you probably read about my pH crash and my utter hopelessness of my fishless cycle ever finishing... It seemed stalled for a couple weeks with several steps backwards... Well tonight my readings came back:
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: I didn't bother as it will be ridiculously high as it was last time I tested.
So... 4.5 weeks its been since the start of my cycle and I think I'm near comletion. I think that this weekend I might have a good potential to get fish if these readings keep up!! How I've planned for this! And plants...I'm all ready for that too. If this had gone on past 6 weeks I think I was getting more and more tempted to switch to a planted cycle. I have all my fish food (5 kinds), plant fertilizers, shrimp stuff, I'm all set to go! My cats seem to really want to eat my fish food
, I'm having to hide it away from them.
What I did since all the bad stuff last week: I used baking soda and crushed coral to get my kH to 4 and my pH to 7.0 (took a couple days to stabalize). I increased my suface agitation as my spraybar was pointed downward and there was little surface motion, now its upward and bubbles out a bit. I raised the temp to 80.5F. I don't know if this all was necessary but my pH stabalized a few days back and a couple days ago I did the rest and am thrilled with my results
.
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: I didn't bother as it will be ridiculously high as it was last time I tested.
So... 4.5 weeks its been since the start of my cycle and I think I'm near comletion. I think that this weekend I might have a good potential to get fish if these readings keep up!! How I've planned for this! And plants...I'm all ready for that too. If this had gone on past 6 weeks I think I was getting more and more tempted to switch to a planted cycle. I have all my fish food (5 kinds), plant fertilizers, shrimp stuff, I'm all set to go! My cats seem to really want to eat my fish food
, I'm having to hide it away from them.What I did since all the bad stuff last week: I used baking soda and crushed coral to get my kH to 4 and my pH to 7.0 (took a couple days to stabalize). I increased my suface agitation as my spraybar was pointed downward and there was little surface motion, now its upward and bubbles out a bit. I raised the temp to 80.5F. I don't know if this all was necessary but my pH stabalized a few days back and a couple days ago I did the rest and am thrilled with my results
.
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