6.6 Cycling Update

Well, things are happening wonderfully in the 6.6 Record time, it seems, because I've done fishless cycling. And perhaps because I accidentally poured too much ammonia in there to begin with. I also did what was recommended by the fishless cycle people, which is heavy planting, high temperatures, and oxygen (so I kept the water levels lower for excess splashing) (which of course does reduce the CO2 for the plants, but I'm doing my best here).

The process, with fish, takes 6-8 weeks. Last Friday, 9 days ago, I poured roughly a tablespoon in the tank. The ammo immediately shot up through the roof. I was prepared to wait a long time for nitrites (NO2) to show up. Even longer for NO3.

10/29: ammonia was 8.0+ (off the charts), no NO2 at all.
11/1:   ammonia still 8.0, NO2 was 1.0ppm. Hooray!
11/3:   ammonia .25ppm (spike is over), NO2 5ppm (off the charts), NO3 >160ppm (off the charts)

Hooray!

So what we're looking at, for the lay person, is the Nitrogen cycle. Ammonia comes out of fish as waste (fish poop) and is toxic to fish. Bacteria in the tank (which I am currently cultivating) convert the Ammonia to Nitrite, equally toxic to fish. A second set of bacteria convert Nitrite to Nitrate. Less toxic to fish, in moderate quantities, but does need to be removed via water changes. So that's the N cycle, and all of the appropriate bacteria need to grow in hefty quantities before a fish can be put into the tank (at least, if one is doing the more-human fishless cycle is employed.)

My test results indicate that the cycle is more than well under way. The ammonia spike is receding; the nitrites are spiking and the nitrates are spiking. The latter will continue to do so until the nitrites go back to zero. When my amm and nitrites read 0, I can do a 90% water change to eliminate nitrates, and plop in Rhaegar.

The purple and red are just what you want to see in a cycling tank, and exactly what you never want to see in a populated tank. The light color of the ammonia tube indicates the NH3/NH4 is receding.