Ammonia dosage in Fishless cycle?

[Tom]

Hi TTA,

Since I only got the ammonia cleaning solution which contains softwater+ammonia, it won't be accurate for me to add the same dosage as yours.

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Last night, I measure the water again. A little surprise for the cycling process. But again, I have difficulty of reading the results.

Amonia: slightly less than 4.0ppm which is similar to the past two days.

Nitrite: 1.6 or 3.3~33ppm. I'm really not sure about the color whether it hits the bottom chart or not, but it definitely turned red right away.

Nitrate: slightly less than 10ppm

PH: 7.8
GH: 6dh
KH:3dh

I was surprised to see the Nitrate presents in the tank since I have only cycled the tank for 3 days. I hope that means the cycle process proceeds very well.

For the ammonia level, I didn't add anymore into the tank. It is quite close to the level (4ppm) I wanted.

Since the Nitrie spike, I re-seeded the tank with 2 scope of pea gravels from the cycled tank. Hope the new colony of bacteria will help to speed up the cycle.


--Tom

 

[JSchmidt]

Tom, it's quite possible your tap water has nitrates, and that could account for their presence in your tank. You could check the tap water if you were really curious...

Jim

 

[Tom]

Jim,

That's a good point. I tested the fresh tap water during the lunch hour and got the Nitrate reading slighly less than 5.0ppm. Unless the tap water will produce more Nitrate over time, it's a good news to me on the cycling process.

--Tom

 

[JSchmidt]

I don't know whether it's true of your water supply, but nitrates in ours are pretty variable. Testing the tap water over a week or two every several days would give you an idea of whether yours are, too.

When nitrifying bacteria kick in, you'll see it pretty clearly in your test results. Always an exciting moment...

Jim