The Puffer Forum

Ok need a little help here. Ive been doing a fish less cycle im on day number 7 and i haven't found any traces of nitrites or nitrates. I got a cup of gravel from my cousins established tank. (which i don't even know has sufficient bacteria on it.) ( he hasn't done cycling (so i found out afterwords), and there like 4-5 tetras in his tank.)

-10 gallon , silk plants
-ace hardware janitorial strength ammonia
-api test kit
-keep ammonia in between 4-5ppm , its extremely hard for me to tell the difference between green lvls for ammonia on the api test kit.
-tank temp is 85


should i be noticing any changes at this point or am i on the right track? it just seems like im not getting anywhere , to me it just doesn't seem like my ammonia is lowering at all , i even skipped a day or two because it seemed like it didn't move. In the beginning to achieve the intial 5 pmm i did it very slow , few drops test, few drops test untill i got around 5ppm. any advice thanks. ( i put 20 drops in the beginning to initially achieve 5pmm , and then some days i added 10 ) Have i overdosed?

You've been adding more ammonia since the first day, but it hasn't kept adding up? Ammonia is going somewhere?

no i haven't been adding ammonia everyday. I haven't added ammonia the past 2 days because when i tested it looks the same green color. It just seems the color never changes , that or i cant tell the difference in green shades on the api test which is hard to tell lol.

Oh, okay. How about you do water changes until you can measure it again? It might be that you've OD'd the tank on ammonia. This can actually happen - it kills the BB.

How long have those tetras been in your cousin's tank? What are his levels?

from what i can remember he has like 3 black skirt tetras , 2 red eye tetra , 2 tetras that are solid red and a lemon tetra . Its a 35 gallon tank and its been around for probably anywhere between 5months to a year , not sure. About his levels , unsure.

*im just going to do what greenpuffer suggested , water change.

What makes you so sure his tank isn't cycled after that long? It sounds like you are doing this right. Did you shake the bottle of ammonia to be sure it isn't sudsy?

alright so i found out that i definitely made the mistake of adding too much ammonia. Will i need another scoop of gravel if i overdosed the bacteria?

I used close to 20 drops when I started the cycle in my 20gal. You have the right ammonia as I used the same thing from ACE. If I were you, I would start from square 1. I had to redo the process also, so dont worry just be patient. Maybe a big WC like 80-90% and then add the bateria source. Then follow the instructions from the library article on fishless cycling.

ya im probably just going to start from scratch.

No big deal. Doing it correctly, with the right ammonia source, it should only take 7-10 days to fully cycle your tank.

i got a good laugh out of this , i contacted my LFS to see if i can get some gravel .......,,,, i did mention fishless cycle btw

Used gravel alone can not cycle a tank, you will still need fish to cycle your tank.

Regards,
Kathy Skrdlant

You need an ammonia source, doesn't have to be fish. Gravel provides some bacteria so it goes a bit quicker.

Ok so , i did some water changes and got my ammonia down to 1ppm , i slowly added till i found a range between 4-5 ppm , later that day i went to my LFS bought 2 lbs of used gravel from the 150 gallon , 3 year established tank(put them in new nylon stockings and put in tank). After 24 hours i did some testing and it still looks like its in the 4-5ppm range. Should it not have moved in 24 hours?

It's going to take a while for the bacteria to build up enough to eat all that ammonia from that little amount of gravel you seeded with.