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Amonia drop rate Q please

1K views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  PartyDart 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello all,

I'm on day 2 of cycling. Fishless pure Amonia cycle.

My question is do I add all my drops of Amonia at same time every day or should I break it up and do 1/3 in the morning 1/3 when I get home and 1/3 at bed time?

Thanks again for all the posters on here "wealth of Info"
 
#2 ·
Hello and welcome to the forum!

Do you know what level (ppm), your ammonia is at now?

A common mistake, when doing an ammonia/fishless cycle is add to much ammonia and kill or stall the cycle.
I would bump the ammonia up to 3-4 ppm, and not add anymore ammonia, till the tank starts it's cycle process. If you take a reading, and notice that there has been a significant drop in ammonia, that is when it is time to start adding ammonia daily. This can take a couple weeks. The tank might just sit at 3-4 ppm for a while, then one day, yea, the ammonia is dropping.

I added ammonia a few times a day, during my fishless cycle. In theory, its better to have a constant supply of ammonia, to feed the cycle. If you do not have the time to do this, a once a day feeding will also work.
 
#3 ·
Hello,

I set up everything yesterday morning early. By 11am I had added my 7 drops in a 15 gal tank. I then waited for 2 hrs and took a reading of 5ppm sweet. Then I took another reading before I went to bed say 10pm Amonia read .25 or less. So I added 2 drops and went to bed. I woke up and tested at 8am Amonia = 0, maybe .25. So I added 3 drops and tested again in 2 hrs still low at best. I added 4 more drops and 2 hrs later I read 5ppm again. I am going to do 2 hr tests to see how long my Amonia is lasting. I did add a squeez from my small sponge filter from my small established tank yesterday when I had the reading of 5ppm of Amonia.

Any opinions would be great

Thanx again
 
#7 ·
Strips- with liquid on the way in transit. It seems the tank has settled down .25 to .5 for Amonia and no readings yet of nitrite or nitrate 3.5 days into the cycle.

I added about 5 handfulls(1/2 small net worth) of old substrate since the sqeeze of the sponge. I only have 5lbs of established substrate in our 3gal Betta tank to pull from. I know I cant take it all so I may take a lil more but not much.

Thanks again
 
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