Newbie with Red Cherry Shrimps, need help asap!

ctenophor said:
bobbie- try using a ph stabalizer, it raises alk as well, they are pretty cheap too.

crushed coral will disolve and increase the amount of calcium carbonate, making your gh test higher, shouldn't harm shrim though.

don't think of your ammonia going up when you add it as starting from square one, when this happens you are making the cycle stronger. the higher your ammonia is durring cycle the more bacteria you will have.

i know people who did a 4 week cycle on a reef tank. the first week and a half he kept ammonia way off the charts. by the end of the fourth wek everything was stable. 2 days later he added all 11 of his fishg, including a huge achiles tang.

never had an ammoina or nitrite spike, and nitrates are at 0-2 consistantly.

hth

and just because i saw someone post tis on the first page.

the bottles to help cycling aren;t fullof "good bacteria" its full of a catalystic enzyme( redundant?) that causes them to breed fatser. 8b
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Thanks for the information. I'd rather add crushed coral then pH up due to the fact its natural and plus my tap water has very low KH and GH which I assume will increase of TDS and CaCO3 to help with the growth of the snails and shrimp and avoid erosion.

But I'll wait until the tank is cycled to do all that.


Also I did not know bottles that contain 'good bacteria' is full of catalystic enzymes that causes inverts to breed faster. I'll look into that further.
 
6/23
Ammonia - .5-1 ppm
Nitrite - ZERO!!!!!
Nitrates - N/A

I added a smaller amount of ammonia (2.5mL) since there was some still in the tank. But I guess it is somewhat safe to assume that all the ammonia that got converted into nitrite is being converted to nitrate.
 
Have you been keeping your ammonia level at 5ppm? And have you seen any spikes on Nitrite?
 
fishy714 said:
Have you been keeping your ammonia level at 5ppm? And have you seen any spikes on Nitrite?
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I've been keep my ammonia levels around 3-4 ppm because I plan to put some shrimp in here and the bioload would be a lot less then of fish. I'm not entirely too worried about that because I'll probably be adding only 20 and what's left of the 4 I got in my 2.5 to this 10 gallon.

My nitrites spiked up multiple times but now it is currently zero.

I'm assuming that the nitrites have spiked and are steady because the ammonia is disappearing (being converted to nitrites) but no nitrites are showing up on tests.



6/24
Ammonia - 1 ppm
Nitrite - ZERO!!!!!!!!!!
Nitrate - N/A

Since ammonia was a bit higher then yesterday I added only about 2 mL of ammonia. I'm still waiting for ammonia to be able to drop to zero over 24 hours.

Hopefully as ammonia drops to zero over 24 hours and nitrites stay at zero over 24 hours, I will start to increase ammonia input very slowly to increase the amount of bacteria. I want my tank to be able to convert around 3-3.5 mL of ammonia in 24 hours which is approximately 3-4 ppm.
 
How long have you been doing the fishless cycle for? At around 3 to 4 weeks you should have saw a change in your parameters. If your Nitirite is zero and your ammonia can get to zero within 24 hours then you are done with your fishless cycle.
 
LOL. It's been longer then 3-4 weeks because of random bumps down the cycling road of me being away or being sick and unable to go to the tank to add ammonia and stuff. I lost track of how long it's been honestly.

6/26
Ammonia - 1 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - N/A

Well from what I can tell there doesn't seem to be a build up of ammonia so some of the ammonia is being converted to nitrites and none of is is staying as nitrites. There still seems to be some ammonia left in the water column even after 24 hours so I think the bacteria colony has to grow a bit more to be able to handle the bioload. I added only 2 mL of ammonia so the ammonia should be around 3 ppm.

I'm waiting for the ammonia to be able to drop to zero within 24 hours and the nitrites to stay at zero.
 
6/27
ammonia - 1.5 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - N/A

There seems to be a small build up in ammonia. I reduced the amount of ammonia I added to 1.5 mL. Nitrites still are zero so still good.
 
Your keeping a constant level of ammonia everyday right?
 
If you read my posts I add a bit of ammonia every time I do a water test. 3.5 mL makes the tank approx. 3-4 ppm. So if there is already some ammonia in the water column left over, I add less.
 
Did not get a chance today to test water parameters. I just got home and I'm extremely tired from work so I just added only 1.5 mL of ammonia. I will test tomorrow morning when I wake up.
 
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