The Puffer Forum

So my tank has been setup for maybe 3 weeks, my water parameters are as follows:
Ammonia: 2ppm
Nitrite: off the chart high
Nitrate: about 10ppm.
So after weeks of just sitting there my tank came to life, the ammonia has been high because ive been adding it everyday then yesterday the nitrite started to rise and today it's gone crazy.

My question is now that the nitrite has spiked and the nitrate is going up do I hold off on adding more ammonia? Or do I just decrease my amount added daily. I know i read it somewhere but can't remember where.

I also visited this amazing saltwater place yesterday and talked to a girl who works there, she's going to see if she can find me a dwarf puffer. I also got to oggle their other puffers and am now cometely charmed by the black dogface puffer they have (and I'm a little smitten with the baby porcupine puffer they have too). Maybe one day.

What I do once my nitrites start registering is cut my ammonia dosing in half. I've also, in the past, dosed the same amount of ammonia, but only every OTHER day instead of every day. The both work. I now just cut the dose in half because it's easier to remember to dose every day than trying to remember if I dosed the day before or not.

Alright I can do that, thanks. my dose has been pretty low each day but constant.

What size tank, and how much have you been dosing?

It's 5 gallon and only 1 drop per day, to half I'll go to 1 drop every other day.

Oh, ok. I just finished a 5 gallon myself. I started with 2 drops per day, then when my nitrites registered, I dropped it to 1 drop per day. In your case, with your bacteria colony grown for 1 drop per day, then yeah, I would drop to every other day. Or you could continue doing 1 drop a day, it might prolong the cycle a couple extra days that way, but I wouldn't worry about it either way.

I'll go with every other day. Once the cycle is complete should I continue to add ammonia until the big water change before my fish is added?

make sure when the cycle is done you give it a few days to make sure it is done...

Will d. I haven't ordered my puffer yet, I was going to wait until the cycle was done just to make sure. Wouldn't want anything to go wrong after all this preparation.

, and also monitor the water closely when you add the fish, to make sure the colony of bac. is large enough to handle their bioload.

+1 to what I.Puff.Too said.

Yeah, once you the nitrites stop registering, continue adding ammonia until you're ready to add fish. And keep testing to make sure everything is still the way it is supposed to be. Then, just before you add your fish, do your 50% water change. And keep testing for a week or so after you add the fish to make sure you have enough bacteria. If you start getting spikes in ammonia or nitrites, be ready to do constant partial water changes while the bacteria colony grows larger.

Thanks for the advice, I'll make sure to keep a close eye on the water. Constant partial changes I can handle, I've just had a sick Betta and been doing 100% changes in a qt tank, once he recovered slightly he was one po-ed fish.

I'm confused--your future fish won't be putting out waste every other day, why ad the ammonia like that? Have you read the fishless cycling articles in our Library?

I think i did, that's probably where i read about the ammonia adding. Doesn't it say to half the dosage once nitrites show? i'm not sure how to half 1 drop, unless i get a smaller dropper. I could just keep adding it every day if that would be better. i don't know, i've never done a fishless cycle before.

That technique is fine. Alternate days will work when you are adding such small amounts. There is no problem with the needed bacteria from alternate day additions. The ammonia additions should be halved when the ammonia titer spike is passed and the ammonia is being oxidized to nitrite quickly. High ammonia titers suppress the nitrite oxidizing bacteria.

Alternate day additions are not quite as safe as reduced daily additions, but that would require a preliminary 50% dilution of your ammonia itself.

Three weeks however is a log time for the ammonia spike. What were the ammonia titers during the spike? If they were quite high for that time you may need to re-inoculate with the bacteria. And what ammonia titer are you getting with the one-drop addition.

It is hard to impossible to generalize in "drops". Various prepared ammonia solutions on the market can vary in strength; also, drop size depends both on the dropper itself and the technique used in dropping.

library/water-filtration/fishlessconsiderations/