# Fishless Cycle



## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

Hi all, I have had a 10 gallon and 15 gallon tank for over a year now. The Angel fish, and offspring, are growing too big for the tanks, and I want to get some Discus, so I recently got a 50 gallon tank. Starting it with a fishless cycle seemed to be the obvious way to go given that I don't want to put the family pets through a the cycling of a new tank. I bought a $25 test kit and some clear Ammonia Hydroxide from the local grocery store. The results were not as straight forward as I expected. Click HERE for my notes. I will update them as I go along. Comments/Suggestions?


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## ron v (Feb 24, 2005)

Have you tested your hardness? GH and KH. KH is a measure of your buffering capacity. If it is too low, PH will drop like a rock and will kill your bacteria. Your notes indicate that PH was as low as 6. Is that the lowest that your test will read? If so it may have been much lower.


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

No, I didn't test for hardness. The master kit didn't include it and articles didn't seem to mention it as critical. I will get a test. Yes, I can't test below 6.0 PH so it is actually 6.0 or lower. Thanks for the advice.


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## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

Wow, I am impressed at all the work you did tracking everything.


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

I am too. Very prepared. You are well on your way to a sucessful tank!


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

Time to add all of the fish tomorrow night if the water tests zeros.


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## ron v (Feb 24, 2005)

Don't add fish until nitrite also = zero.


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

Yeah, thanks. 90% water change and a [hopefully] massive bacteria colonies took care of the nitrite.

The fish are in. Any guesses about what the water will do next?


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## cheseboy (Aug 5, 2005)

It depends on how many fish you put in. If you put in too many fish and did not have a large ammonia spike/ nitrite spike when cycling then you could have a mini cycle. Basically the higher the spike during cycling the more bacteria you will have, but one or two fish should be fine.


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## ron v (Feb 24, 2005)

rcomeau said:


> Any guesses about what the water will do next?


I hope I'm wrong but I predict that you are not through cycling. You are suppose to wait until nitrite zeros. I'm not sure yours did that.


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

No mini cycle so far... click here.

However, sad to report that new cardinal and neon tetras died and a 2nd generation Angel fish died. I'm not sure why.


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

More fish died. I think it has since stablized but I probably need a different filter method.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

You can use Prime, it doesn't remove the ammonia from the tank, just makes it non-toxic to fish. I'm impressed by the work you did but puzzled that fish are dying. What kind of filter do you have on the big tank? Once you have an established tank, even a little one, you could have taken filter media from it to seed the big one. Don't go nuts micromanaging your pH 6 is just fine for Angels and tetras. Just watch out for big drop offs (I had one tank drop to 3.5) and then change water. A little baking soda or central american cichlid salt with give you a little hardness and pH stability. Don't go overboard, Angels and tetras like very soft water. Drop you temp. Angels like 90, but you need a lot more aeration in a 90 degree tank than an 80 degree one.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

> said the water was hard like their's


 In this case, don't add anything but water conditioner.


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## rcomeau (Apr 23, 2006)

Yeah, I'm puzzled that fish died too. My best guess is that there was too much anaerobic decay because the UGF flow was too low and I needed to vacuum more. 

I had the temp at 90 to speed the initial fishless cycle. I dropped it to 84 for the Discuss because they like it warm. If the Discuss survives I intend to get more.

I believe that the water originally went soft because I fishless cycled with Ammonia Chloride. The chemistry resulted in soft water by the time the cycle was near finished. It has been hard since the 90% water change with hard tap water.

The remaining fish (incl a neon) seem to be ok for the last week or so.

I'm still not sure if I want to replace the UGF. I like the simplicity and lack of noice.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

You can make it stronger by using a bigger powerhead(s), but you don't want it so strong that the food is sucked down uneaten. Make sure that the surface of the water is being disturbed, thats how you get O2 in the water. I wouldn't replace the UG, you'd have to start all over, but you can add a hang on tank filter if you need more filter capacity. If you do ditch the UG, you can put a powerhead on a sponge or box filter and still have it quiet. UGs are very stable, but the low flow/substrate ratio may mean the cyclng takes longer.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Take the filter from one of the little tanks and scrape the grunge off cartrige or squeeze the sponge into the new tank.


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