No ammonia after two weeks?

Keaze

I bought my first tank 2 weeks ago, a 10 gal. I read a lot about cycling and caring for fishes. With the tank I bought 3 guppies, 2 females and a male, because they looked like interesting fishes to have. Also in my tank there are a few live plants: a rather small plant that's about 4 inches high, and 2 bunches of tall fast growing ones, I don't know the name of any of them. I'm been monitoring ammonia everyday, and after a week still had a reading of 0. So I decided last weekend to go get a few neon tetras to get a higher bio load, thinking maybe my plants absorbed the ammonia. Now, a week later, with those 8 fishes in the tank, I still have 0 ammonia. I overfeed quite a lot to try to make more waste, it still doesn't work. I have two different testing kits that say the same thing. Nutrafin mini master kit, and API liquid ammonia test.

So what is happening ? Is this very small amount of plants really absorbing all the ammonia? What if I never get even the beginning of a cycle? Will my fishes thrive in this "uncycled" water?

My filter is a marineland 100. Temperature is 27, PH is around 7-7.5. Nitrite 0, nitrate 0. I had 2 20% water changes.

Any input on this would be appreciated!!

M

Byron

It seems this is going normally, re the cycling. Live plants assimilate ammnia/ammonium as their preffered source of nitrogen, and they can take up a lot of it. Especially fast growing plants. You should not see ammonia or nitrite with sufficient live plants for the fish load.

But on this, you are maxed out for a 10g.

And, welcome to Tropical Fish Keeping forum.

Byron.