On Day 45, my fishless cycle finally finished. I just thought I'd give a report from a newbie on the whole process, for those who are thinking of trying it or who are getting frustrated.
The main thing is that originally I saw a lot of reports about fishless cycling happening in 10 or 20 days. Some of them claimed to have done that without any seeding, but now I'm skeptical about that. Given other posts I've read, I'm starting to think that without seeding, 45 days is pretty average.
Here are a few other observations (some of which merely confirm information I've seen elsewhere):
- Occasionally my nitrites would rise during the cycle, after they had already begun falling. The mini-spikes seemed to happen after I had disturbed the gravel or after I had cleaned some algae, some of which "escaped" into gravel and decorations to decay. So once nitrites start to drop, it's not necessary a steady march downward. (Note: now that the cycle is complete, disturbing the gravel doesn't seem to be a problem.)
- Although there were occasionally variations in the test readings, often they would be stable at something relatively high (like 2.0 ppm) for several days, and then without warning go to 0 overnight.
- One thing I did a little differently is that I did NOT keep dosing ammonia daily. I'm pretty sure that if I had done that, my cycle would have taken a little longer. While waiting for ammonia to drop, I added ammonia only if the reading went below 2 ppm, and then I would only add 2 ppm more (to bring the total to around 4 ppm). If I had it to do over again, I think I would add even less, to keep the ammonia between 1 and 2 ppm (rather than between 2 and 4). While waiting for nitrites to drop, I added 1 ppm of ammonia every other day. It seems that adding more only creates an unnecessary nitrite buildup and probably delays completion of the cycle by a day or two (since there's that much more nitrite that has to be processed). In fact, I've since seen the web site of one discus breeder that recommends dosing only 0.5 ppm of ammonia every other day.
- In my case, the ammonia eaters seemed to do fine on 1 ppm every other day. After keeping this schedule, and after the nitrites had finally hit zero, I added a double dose of ammonia (2 ppm) just to make sure I'd be ready to fully stock. Within twelve hours, ammonia and nitrites were both zero again.
- The bacteria didn't skip a beat when I went out of town for three days and didn't feed them. They also didn't seem to skip a beat when I changed filter media. (I'm using the new Whisper filters that have a "bio sponge" in addition to the "bio bag" -- only the bio bag gets changed, so the bio sponge seems to help.)
- I kept the temperature at around 88 F (31 C).
Hope that info helps/encourages somebody!
The main thing is that originally I saw a lot of reports about fishless cycling happening in 10 or 20 days. Some of them claimed to have done that without any seeding, but now I'm skeptical about that. Given other posts I've read, I'm starting to think that without seeding, 45 days is pretty average.
Here are a few other observations (some of which merely confirm information I've seen elsewhere):
- Occasionally my nitrites would rise during the cycle, after they had already begun falling. The mini-spikes seemed to happen after I had disturbed the gravel or after I had cleaned some algae, some of which "escaped" into gravel and decorations to decay. So once nitrites start to drop, it's not necessary a steady march downward. (Note: now that the cycle is complete, disturbing the gravel doesn't seem to be a problem.)
- Although there were occasionally variations in the test readings, often they would be stable at something relatively high (like 2.0 ppm) for several days, and then without warning go to 0 overnight.
- One thing I did a little differently is that I did NOT keep dosing ammonia daily. I'm pretty sure that if I had done that, my cycle would have taken a little longer. While waiting for ammonia to drop, I added ammonia only if the reading went below 2 ppm, and then I would only add 2 ppm more (to bring the total to around 4 ppm). If I had it to do over again, I think I would add even less, to keep the ammonia between 1 and 2 ppm (rather than between 2 and 4). While waiting for nitrites to drop, I added 1 ppm of ammonia every other day. It seems that adding more only creates an unnecessary nitrite buildup and probably delays completion of the cycle by a day or two (since there's that much more nitrite that has to be processed). In fact, I've since seen the web site of one discus breeder that recommends dosing only 0.5 ppm of ammonia every other day.
- In my case, the ammonia eaters seemed to do fine on 1 ppm every other day. After keeping this schedule, and after the nitrites had finally hit zero, I added a double dose of ammonia (2 ppm) just to make sure I'd be ready to fully stock. Within twelve hours, ammonia and nitrites were both zero again.
- The bacteria didn't skip a beat when I went out of town for three days and didn't feed them. They also didn't seem to skip a beat when I changed filter media. (I'm using the new Whisper filters that have a "bio sponge" in addition to the "bio bag" -- only the bio bag gets changed, so the bio sponge seems to help.)
- I kept the temperature at around 88 F (31 C).
Hope that info helps/encourages somebody!
