Fishless Cycle

[TonySimm]

Hey all,

I have setup a 55 gallon bare bottom tank as a grow out tank for 5-6 juvenile discus I'm going to get from Kenny on his March shipment.

I'm doing my first fishless cycle and have a couple questions. I set the tank up a week and a half ago and have done 40-50% every other day water changes. I have a canister filter, an HOB and a sponge filter. I know its overkill especially since the canister is graded for a 150g but I had them all left over from a previous setup. Both the canister and HOB filter have sponge prefilters.

This past weekend I added 4 plants and washed in a bleach/water combo to remove anything I didn't want. I put the plants in clay pots with: Carib Sea Eco Complete Planted Black Aquarium Substrate. I've read this helps your cycle.

Should I be treating with ammonia daily? I won't be receiving the fish for a few weeks. I plan on continuing the water changes as I'm doing now. Are there any other things I should be doing other than water changes, using Prime and adding plants and substrate?

I haven't ran any tests on the water yet as I figured I probably haven't gotten everything stabilized yet. Everything looks perfectly clear and the plants are already showing improvement and growing.

I want to get the water there slowly but surely without doing anything that may cause any spikes or issues later on especially considering I have the time to take it slow.

Thank you

[AquaticNerd]

Here's how I did my fishless cycle:
1. Setup all equipment
2. Fill with treated water
3. Dose pure ammonia (in my case, I used Fritz Pro Ammonium Chloride powder) until I got to 4ppm of ammonia
4. Test the water 2x daily (for my schedule it was every morning and night). For the first week or so, I only used the ammonia test since I didn't see any change to the values.
5. Once I started to see ammonia dropping, I would dose the ammonia every evening (more convenient for me) until I got it back up to 4ppm. At this point, I also started testing for nitrite.
6. Continue this process every day until the 4ppm of ammonia dosed in the evening was gone at the 24 hour mark. At that point, I know my first level of the cycle is 100% complete. At this point, I kept dosing the 4ppm until I saw the nitrites also hit 0ppm.
7. Once nitrites hit 0ppm, I continued dosing until I saw 0ppm ammonia and nitrite after dosing 4ppm 24 hours earlier. Once I saw that, I knew my cycle was complete.
8. I dialed back my dosing to 2ppm ammonia every 24 hours until my fish were scheduled to arrive. The night before they were to be delivered, I changed nearly 100% of the water with fresh aged and treated water. This removed all of the nitrates that had bulit up during the entire cycling process. I tested the water for nitrates just before the large WC to see what it was, and it was definitely above the max on the API kit. After the water change, it was <5ppm. Fish arrived the next morning around 9:30AM, so they had a super clean and well cycled tank. I did not experience the "mini-cycle" that some experience when adding fish.

Some things I would consider changing about your current regimen. I would stop doing water changes. During the fishless cycle, it's not necessary, and you're only diluting the amount of ammonia/nitrite available. I would do what I've done - hold off on a water change until the very end right before your fish arrive. This will keep your parameters even throughout the cycle and you can easily eliminate any level of nitrates by just removing all the water. Plants don't necessarily help your cycle. At a very small level, live plants can absorb some levels of ammonia and nitrite, but they mostly use nitrate for their energy. While cycling with plants is possible, I don't do it because I like my cycle to be as simple as possible (don't have to dose ferts, I can keep the lights off, etc). I don't think the plants will harm your cycle.

You really need a test kit and test your water at least once a day. How else will you know if you need to add more ammonia or not? You should only add ammonia to get back to your target PPM (whether that is 2, 3, or 4ppm).

If you can, I would put off the shipment of fish for as long as you can until you know for certain your tank is cycled. Juvenile discus are not forgiving and you will more than likely have issues with ammonia/nitrite due to the frequency and amount of food you need to feed juveniles for growing them out. Likewise, if your 55 is going to just be a grow-out tank, I would consider removing any decor and substrate, leaving them a bare aquarium. It'll make your life a lot easier to keep it clean.

[TonySimm]

Thanks for the response!

I have a test kit and will post the results this evening. I'm going to follow your process if I'm not already cycling with what I have done so far.

The tank is bare bottom the substrate is in clay pots with the plants and not on the bottom.

Thanks again

[AquaticNerd]

Sounds like you've done your research and are well on your way! Keep us updated with the test results and we can see how it's going.

[TonySimm]

Ok here is what I got:

PH: 6.2
Ammonia: 0.25-0.3ish
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0 but a little above but not much at all.

What do you guys think?

[AquaticNerd]

If you're looking at the nitrite test and it doesn't look 100% blue (i.e a tinge of purple), I would say that you have not completed the cycle yet. This is also supported by the fact that your nitrate readings are also 0. Besides a heavily planted tank, I don't think I've ever seen an aquarium with exactly 0 nitrates.

I would dose your aquarium back up to whatever level of ammonia you like. You mentioned 2ppm, so I would get to that point. If you're using pure, liquid ammonia, you should be safe to test 5 minutes after adding the ammonia (to give it time to dilute throughout your water column). Get the results and see where it's at. Test for ammonia and nitrite 12 hours after, and 24 hours after. Repeat this process (dosing back up to 2ppm) every day until you've seen the spike and drop in both ammonia and nitrite. I found it was easier to keep a log on a spreadsheet to track when I tested and what the results were.

Since we've covered the cycle part, I see that your pH is on the low side - do you age your water? Aging is the process of adding your water to a storage barrel / holding tank (I use a large Brute commercial trash can) and letting it sit overnight with a heater and airstone running in it to bring the water up to temperature as well as off-gas CO2 and chlorine if your water is treated with that. I also add a small recirculating water pump to move the water around. For discus, and especially juveniles, aging is important if you are using tap water and the pH swing over a 24 hour period is greater than .4. My water is right at that mark - from tap it varies between 8.0 and 7.8 pH, and after 24 hours it sits at 7.6 pH, so I took the higher number and chose to age my water anyways.

[dspeers]

Here is what puzzles me, the bacteria use the ammonia as a nitrogen source but still need a carbon source. Has anyone added a little flake food or other carbon source along with ammonia to see if that would accelerate the fishless cycle?

[TonySimm]

I don't age my water but I never had issues in the past. I can start testing the water every other day or so and make sure my PH isn't going through any swings.

I didn't figure the cycle was completed but I haven't added any ammonia yet just that substrate that advertised helping cycle the tank.

I'll pick up some ammonia this weekend. Luckily I still have approximately 4 weeks before the fish arrive.

Thank you for the response and anymore input is appreciated.

[Shan_Evolved]

I would also recommend testing your GH KH. With my low KH of 2, when I fishless cycled my barebottom 55, I had multiple PH crashes in the beginning. I had to add in crushed coral during the fishless cycling process to bump up the KH so the water would have more buffering capacity.

Also using some beneficial bacteria in a bottle such as sera victrive (forgot the name exactly) is a great way to jumpstart the cycle

[TonySimm]

Last night when I tested my water I had just added a few gallons of water and probably over treated quite a bit with my water conditioner so I was worried my test results weren't accurate.

I retested this evening and everything tested the same except PH which came in at 7.6. That's what had me concerned I live in West Virginia and the water here is typically on the hard side. I'll keep testing to make sure I'm not going through swings and just had an inaccurate test result.

Any input is appreciated.

[TonySimm]

The test results were the exact same again today.

I treated with Dr Tim's ammonium chloride solution for the tank so hopefully will see the cycle get started!

[Shan_Evolved]

Did you put any seeded media from another tank? Or use beneficial bacteria like tetra safe start+ or Sera victrive? This makes the process faster (2-6weeks). If you don't have any cycled media from another tank, it will take a loooong time like months.

Local fish stores always have old filter media you could have for free to help Jumpstart your cycle

[Maddie]

The test results were the exact same again today.

I treated with Dr Tim's ammonium chloride solution for the tank so hopefully will see the cycle get started!

Hi
I was in the same boat as you a little over a year ago. I let my tank run for a week or so. I have hard water and high PH. My PH was higher maybe 1 PH higher than the incoming discus was coming from. I received the fish and placed them into the tank after floating them for 20 mins. Then opened bag, drained water and plop and drop the fish right into the tank. Then I would do large daily water changes for week to week and half. Feeding once a day or so. I had no issues whatsoever. I did not add anything to the water besides prime after each water change. I aged my water in a barrel for a day and heated close to tank temp(it was winter when I received the fish). I don't heat the change water in the summer.
I hope this helps.

[TonySimm]

I didn't use anything from any other tanks because I don't want to risk anything being in the water. I could only imagine the things that may come in from a LFS but I got Dr Tim's nitritate solution coming to help complete the cycle.

Supposedly it's a pretty easy deal trying this but I'll make sure. I have a local guy I trust if I need a filter to carry over to this tank but I'm hoping to have 0 risk of anything being here from any other fish/tank.

[TonySimm]

It does Maddie thank you! Trying to do a completely clean cycle to start on the best footing possible.