The Puffer Forum

So -- I wanted to gather opinions on if my tank might be CLOSE to cycling properly. It seems really early, but I kind of had a weird approach which I hope is working...I have not started a tank for a years so I wanted to get your opinions.

Forgive me -- but I read lots of info on how to cycle and came up with my own approach, so this may seem screwy.

The basics: I started the tank 6 days ago with a used biowheel, stability, a tad bit of amonia to jump start it -- then later added 2 mollies, etc. My amonia rose to 1 for several days and is now almost nill, I never got a reading on nitrites during the whole process. The tank got cloudy for 2 days and is now crystal clear. All starter live stock are doing well.

DAY ONE
Cleaned the the tank, filled 3/4 full of declorinated tap water, place the heater and filter, used an old well cultured biowheel from a friends tank. Readings: zero for nitrites and amonia, ph=7

DAY TWO (early am)
Add gravel, cap full of amonia and Stability, added marine salt. Stability added every day therafter as directed.
Amonia: 1
Nitrites: 0
Ph: 7.8 (my target)
SG: .005 (my target)


DAY TWO LATE EVENING:
Added snails and ghost shrimp

DAY THREE:
Add two Mollies after long acclimation to SG .005, added drfit woods and other orinamates, continue with Stability, etc
Amonia: 1
Nitrites: 0
Ph: 7.8 (my target)
SG: .005 (my target)

DAY FOUR:
Water gets cloudy. Continue with Stability, etc. Mollies doing well. Ghosts shrimp killed by mollies. Snails seem to be having lots of sexual encounters! (food!)
Amonia: 1
Nitrites: 0
Ph: 7.8 (my target)
SG: .005 (my target)

DAY FIVE:
Water stays cloudy. Continue with Stability, etc. All doing well.
Amonia: 1
Nitrites: 0
Ph: 7.8 (my target)
SG: .005 (my target)

DAY SIX:
Water clears completely.
Amonia: .5 (if not less)
Nitrites: 0
Ph: 7.8 (my target)
SG: .005 (my target)

If my amonia goes to zero in the next day or so do you think I have cycled the tank or somehow goofed it all up? Why would I never get a reading on nitrites? Is this because of the used biowheel or the stability?

Need more info -- just ask!

Thanks.

You need to see nitrites rise and then fall to zero, and nitrates rise above zero, before your tank is cycled. This process tends to take upwards of 10 days, sometimes as many as 30 days depending on the technique used. Please see the article in the Library on fishless cycling, it has a lot of good information about how a cycle works.

You're doing a bit of a weird hybrid fishless/fishful cycle ... Kind of defeats the purpose of both approaches. Nevertheless, you'll get there soon enough, but you're not quite halfway there yet.

Also I should add that you can't count on the biowheel being much use to you unless the tank it came from was at a salinity close to 1.005. Assuming it came from a freshwater tank, the leap in salinity might have been enough to shock and/or kill the bacteria present.

Anyway, stay the course and you'll be there soon. As I said, the key indicator is when nitrites spike and then fall back down to zero.

What is Stability? If that is a product from the LFS that says it helps cycle a tank, it is probably hindering your cycle. The only known product to me that works well for that is Bio-Spira.

If the biowheel was mature and the bacteria were cut down too badly by the specific gravity change, then your tank may be well on its way. But I would have been much more comfortable if you had left the mollies out. As is, you are cycling to support two mollies and nothing else. Also, no nitrate readings are reported during the week. Ammonia is low-titer for fishless, high for fish. No nitrite seen is possible but not by any means certain. Without nitrate increase in titer, you have no evidence of a cycle being established.

If it were my tank, I would remove the mollies, re-challenge with ammonia at a higher level (3ppm at least) and monitor ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. 24 hour clearance of 3ppm ammonia with no detectable nitrite and increase in nitrate would indicate a completed nitrification cycle. The disappearance of ammonia alone does not say that the tank is cycled.

Stability may have been responsible for helping clear the cloudiness or it may not, but it certainly was not establishing nitrification bacteria. It has heterotrophs, not nitrogen oxidizers.

What RTR is saying about the Stability is that is does not by itself establish a bateria colony but it may help by breaking down protiens and other junk into ammonia for the batcteria to use as food faster. I don't really think that ends up speeding up a cycle much but I do know Stabilty is great to get rid of the smell given off by curing really raw live rock so it does work.

The used biowheel is what is giving you the results you have. If you had a FW tank you would be set but the change in salinity has killed off quite a bit of the bateria on your biowheel, this is almost certainly the cause of your cloudy water. But the biowheel is probably working, about as well as biowheel ever does.

You probably don't have much of a good bateria colony just yet, give it some time to get established. I would certainly suggest that you follow RTR's advice on removing the fish and using larger doses of ammonia, I've cycled similar setups (low brackish to full marine) that way in 4 days.

Hey, biowheels are great! The only thing against them in my view is that they blow off CO2, interfering with planted tanks... But the same can be said for any wet/dry filtration. Biowheels are quite eloquently designed wet/dry filters, and as far as biological filtration goes, wet/dry filtration is by far the most efficient.

Bred I know that a bunch of people swear by biowheels so I don't want to start an argument or anything but....

I've tried a few of them, an Eclipse system and an Emporer and I never found anything good to say about them at all. After a while I always ended up screwing around with the wheel almost constantly to keep it working. I tried pulling the wheel off the Emporer in a pretty heavily stocked oranada tank and saw absolutely NO difference in how well the filter worked. The sponge filter in the corner must have been doing all the work anyway.