Hi FK ,im doing a fishless cycle in my new tank (FW) its 30 gallon/112 litres. im only on day 7 of the cycle,after using the scales on here i just started of by putting in 4ml/ppm of household ammonia from the diy store to get things going. iv got 3 plants in there and have been gradually rising the temp of the tank to 80 .tank got a bit cloudy on day 2 but has gone now .id have liked to have started of at 5 ppm ammonia but couldnt measure this at all ,so day 1 was 4 ppm then 3ppm everyday since .got my api test kit today and the readings are amm 0.25 ppm ,ph 6.8 nitrite 0ppm nitrate 0 ppm.my question is am i doing ok or should i get my ammonia up to 4/5 ppm? ta

Hi

To cycle the tank you need to decide on the level you want. 4ppm is a good level and will allow a decent amount of stock when the cycle is done.

The procedure then is to dose to 4ppm. Test ammonia after 24 hours and if it has dropped below 4ppm add just enough ammonia to get back to that 4ppm level. Keep this going every day.

As ammonia is processed, nitrites will be produced. The nitrite level will rise for quite a long time until there are enough nitrite-eating bacteria to start tackling it. At that point nitrite levels will start to fall. Keep dosing ammonia to 4ppm every day and when nitrites start to fall you can also start testing the nitrAte level, which will begin rising.

Eventually you will see that ammonia and nitrite both return to 0 24 hours after dosing with ammonia to 4ppm. At that point, you will still need to carry on dosing every 24 hours, BUT start testing for ammonia and nitrite 12 hours after dosing. When those 12 hour tests show 0 on both ammonia and nitrite, the tank is cycled and after a very large water change to reduce the nitrAte level you can add your first fish.

hi fishlady ,ok your advice sounds good to me ,,iv not done my ammonia add today ,,so il add 4 ml/ ppm today .should i give my water a test after an hour to check the levels ? im not sure what % the ammonia is in the bottle ,i just kno it doesnt foam up when i shake it ,n thats good.. it may be that i need to add more of this solution to achieve my 4 ppm ? thanks

Hi

Use the calculator in our fishless cycling article (at the bottom of the article before the comments). Fill in the volume of the tank less 10% for gravel etc, the current ammonia level from your test and the level you want it to be (i.e. 4ppm) and it will tell you how much to add. Check after about 20 minutes to see that the level is correct.

hiya ,oops never noticed that wee calculator before ,great wee tool .saves me having to get the socks n shoes off when i run out of fingers !!! il do this from now on ,thanks for your help on this ,il just sit tight and wait for this nitrite to make its presence ,hopefully with the tank at a higher temp now it will speed it up a little. something i have to do also is remove these 6 wee mouldy flakes of food i added at the start,this is what i put in to raise the ammonia levels (to messy)before i got into using just ammonia direct .il just pick them out gently as i dont want to disturb all the gravel with a complete clean,and remove the benificial bacteria im trying to colonate it with in the first place , so thanks fishlady for ur advice

ok just a quick update,after a few tests and using the calculator on here thats rated for the use of ammonia 10%,iv tested my water and have worked out that the ammonia i bought from the big diy store (hb) must be in the 5% region for content of ammonia,,,this still just gave me a reading of 2.0 ppm .. so in my calculations to get my ammonia levels up to 4.0 ppm i now have to put 16 ml of the ammonia i bought into the tank .Now i know exactly how much ammonia to put in my 30 g tank until my nitrite reading appears,then il just adjust accordingly as i continue into phase 2 of this fishless cycling with ammonia set up .im a lot more settled now iv worked out my amounts of ammonia to be adding :)))

The Homebase ammonia is standard concentration, around the 10% mark so that's a bit odd to be honest.

Can you double check everything including tank size as entering 4ppm and a starting value of 0ppm for 100 litres gives a result of 4ml for 10% ammonia. Even if it was 1/2 strength that would still only need 8ml so something is off somewhere.

What are the dimensions of your tank: length, width, height of water?

hiya im not in my own house at the moment ,but last nite i tested for ammonia and got a 0.25 reading ,what happened was i used the table and i used it to get a figure of 3.5 roughly ,so i dicided to double it as i kept getting low readings and the ammonia must not be 10 %.i put 7 ml of the solution in and this gave me a reading of 2.0 ppm .im goin to test later and if its 0.25 again it must mean that to get it to4.0 ppm il have to add around 14/16 ml roughly to get my ammonia levels up to 4.0 ppm.the ammonia i bought was value ammonia as this was all they had for sale ,maybe this could be the reason its not a 10% ammonia.
when i do my tests later il be able to tell u if this works ,im kinda just relying on the test kit for my calculations at this point . il b keeping an eye on it flady,its baffled me a little also ,il update u later with more info later ,ta

hi ,the size of my tank are : length 80 cm ,width 35 cm,hieght 40 cm =112 litres /25 gallon uk.

OK. Well 112 litre tank is only going to hold 100 litres of actual water. The Homebase Value Ammonia is 9.5% which is close enough for the calculator. It comes in a plain white bottle with orange label, is that what you have?

Assuming it is, I just ran the dosage calculator and entering Desired Ammonia Level as 4ppm, Existing Ammonia level as 0.25ppm and tank volume as 100 litres it says the correct dose is 3.75ml.

Which test kit are you using to test the ammonia level in the tank?