How to CYCLE a fish tank

THIS IS A FISHLESS CYCLE
...usually a 6 week time frame.
In order to perform this process as a fishless cycle, a source of ammonia needs to be added to the tank daily. This can be acheived using flake food, which will break down to form ammonia, (but IMO is slower), or you can use a *PURE* household ammonia. (*PURE* as in no other additives/ingredients listed on the bottle.)
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Understanding the Nitrogen Cycle...
( cycling a tank.. your water parameters will read as follows)

Stage/Week 1:
Ammonia... zero
Nitrites... zero
Nitrates... zero

Stage/Week 2:
Ammonia starts to rise
Nitrites... zero
NitrAtes... zero

Stage/Week 3:
Ammonia continues to rise
Nitrites begin to rise
NitrAtes zero

Stage/Week 4:
Ammonia levels drop
Nitrites continue to rise
NitrAtes begin to rise

Stage/Week 5:
Ammonia: zero
Nitrites levels drop
NitrAtes continue to rise

Stage/Week 6:
Ammonia: Zero
Nitrites: Zero
Tank has completed cycling process
NitrAtes will continue slow rise
( once fish are added)
to control nitrates once tank is established..weekly water changes should be done of around 25% ( adding conditioner).

Thanks for the information. When I started in the hobby, I knew absolutely nothing about the nitrogen cycle. Your bit of information would have saved me from lots of expensive problems and disappointments.

This is indeed a good source of information. I too could have used this when I started out. Of course I could have used a computer as well. Many fish would have had a happier time of it under my care if I had had this source.

Thanks guys...
I was lucky in that I'd been friends with PET people at my LFS for years before I got into fish...and they informed me waay before I did anything.

Hope this info. helps someone else out there that is NEW to all this!!

The one error in that scenario is that Nitrates are never 0. I do not think we are putting Distilled water into our tanks. Nor R/O. All tap water has nitrates, hence the tank never begins with 0 nitrates.

Yes, and as I found out recently, nitrates can sometimes be VERY high coming out of the tap. I was getting a high reading and didn't understand why, until I tested my tap water and found out that it's measuring 40ppm just fresh out of the tap!!

I wish I had tested my tap water more frequently so I would have known why my tanks were testing so high in nitrates.

Keep in mind, this is NOT the preferred method of cycling, and most experts do NOT reccommend this method.

My last post was in response to the beginning of this thread. If you are getting 40ppm right out of the tap, I would contact your water company, unless ofcourse you are using well water. Most water companies and local health laws do NOT allow the tap water to have that high a level of nitrates. In my area, the allowed limit is 10ppm out of that tap.

In some parts of the US, water supplies become critically short, and nitrate levels could vary as water companies use alternative sources. Distilled or reverse osmosis water can be used to replace some of the water during a partial water change, and it may lower nitrate levels. However, if you wind up with mostly distilled or RO water, the pH will be all over the place. People who know about chemistry say it has something to do with the loss of buffers.

Probably in most cases where nitrogen compounds are too high, the culprit is an incomplete nitrogen cycle or a high biological load. Since nitrogen cycling has been mentioned, what is your favorite way to cycle an aquarium? I hope that quite a few people will respond, because cycling is one of the most critical steps in getting off to a good start with aquarium keeping.

I know I am late but am currently cycling my 20 gallon the fishless way. I was wondering what pure ammonia is bottled as and where you could find it? The only ammonia I find is household cleaner ammonia.

Using ammonia is sort of a radical step to speed things up. Patience may be better, and a bunch of hornwort doesn't hurt.

johnarthur wrote:

In some parts of the US, water supplies become critically short, and nitrate levels could vary as water companies use alternative sources. Distilled or reverse osmosis water can be used to replace some of the water during a partial water change, and it may lower nitrate levels. However, if you wind up with mostly distilled or RO water, the pH will be all over the place. People who know about chemistry say it has something to do with the loss of buffers.

Probably in most cases where nitrogen compounds are too high, the culprit is an incomplete nitrogen cycle or a high biological load. Since nitrogen cycling has been mentioned, what is your favorite way to cycle an aquarium? I hope that quite a few people will respond, because cycling is one of the most critical steps in getting off to a good start with aquarium keeping.

I know I won't be very popular saying this ... but I don't like doing fishless cycling. All the fish I have used to cycle my tanks have all lived and are living good healthy lives now. Or I've used some of my big apple snails too. But I think the best way would be to take filter media from a used filter and jump-start the tank. That's what I did with my last big tank, I used water from the external filter, just poured it straight into the tank, used some filter media from another used filter... and that pretty much did it. I added all my puffers after 2 weeks. I thought that was quick because puffers are very sensitive to nitrites and ammonia, but it worked for me, didn't lose even one.

Some people use goldfish to help cycle a tank, but what happens to the goldfish after that? If you already have an established aquarium, you can borrow some filter media, gravel, plants, etc.