fishless cycling too quick.

[andruboz]

i have been fishless cycling my 125g for only 9 days. i have tried every cheat in the book and now wonder if i should put fish in or not.
i have the temps between 82-84 degrees.
i started with 50%used emperor cartridges. also chucked in frozen bait shrimp. about day 5 i thru in 2 gallons of water from gravel siphoning another tank. had nice ammonia consumption and a nitrite spike around day 7. now on day 9 my nitrites have gone down to zero. i tested nitrates and got between 50 and 100. but they could have come from the dirty water i put in right?

i asked my lfs who understands the nitrogen cycle and she thought it was too soon. that maybe it was a nitrite spike but not the nitrite rise and fall signifying the cycling process has occurred thru-out the whole tank. i dont keep good records so i really didnt see it rise. nitrite was barely on scale on the 6th, off scale high on the 7th, and about .50 on the 8th. and zero again on the 9th.

could i have the good bacterium in the emperor filters but not in the gravel? how much longer should i go to play it safe?

i was maybe thinking 80%water change and then put in the stock with biospira. seems to be well tested on the fishgeeks website forum. scared of gambling with my puffer though.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

With copious seed material is it possible to cycle a tank in 9 days, or even less. If you can dose 4 drops of pure ammonia per 10 gals of water and then test it in about 2 hrs and get 0 readings for ammonia and nitrite, you are indeed cycled.

You can turn down the temp to desired level and add fish once it drops. However, if you do not add fish, you need to keep dosing that level of ammonia daily until you do in order to keep the tank cycled.

 

[JSchmidt]

You may have seeded your tanks sufficiently with the Emp media, but it's hard to say. One of my greatest reservations about using rotting shrimp as the ammonia source in fishless cycling is that you never know how robust your biofilter is. If you use liquid ammonia and dose the tank to 4 or 5 ppm and get 0 ppm ammonia and 0 ppm nitrite after 24 hours, you can be sure your tank is cycled. In your case, it's hard to say how well-developed the biofilter is. Any chance you could get some clear household ammonia and challenge with a dosing?

Jim

 

[anonapersona]

Probably good to go

I'd just begin stocking slowly, testing frequently.

 

[JSchmidt]

And then if you get ammonia, you're stuck doing fishy cycling, which presumably he wanted to avoid in the first place.

Challenging the tank with ammonia is simple and without risk to fish. Unless you have difficulty finding clear ammonia, it's hard to imagine a reason not to try it...

Jim