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Fishless cycling requires using household ammonia and adding good bacteria to initiate the cycle, without any fish in the aquarium. You should use ammonia with no ingredients in the bottle of ammonia that is used for cycling, except ammonia, and/or ammonium hydroxide, and/or water. The liquid should appear clear, and most any good brand will do.<o
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The next thing you will need to start a fishless cycle is some seed bacteria. If you already have a healthy, cycled aquarium then that is the best place to get some good seed bacteria from. If you dont have a healthy cycled aquarium, you may need borrow some seed bacteria from a friend, who has an already cycled aquarium, or from your Local Fish Store. What you need is some gravel from a healthy aquarium (about a plastic sandwich Ziploc bag full). It is also good to take some used filter material from a running tank, that has already cycled or filter floss or a filter sponge and some water, both from the same aquarium you got the gravel from. <o
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You will also need a test kit for ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.<o
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During a fishless cycle, the water should not be changed until the cycle is done, and you are getting zero ammonia and zero nitrite readings.<o
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To do a fishless cycle, add 95% of the seed gravel or other substrate from the healthy aquarium to the gravel or other substrate in your new aquarium. Then take the remaining 5% of the seed substrate material, and put it into a small filter sock . If you are using a hang-on-the-back filter, drop this pouch of seed substrate material into the filter. Make sure the pouch does not stop water flow through the filter completely. Then, add some filter material from the cycled tank into the filter box as well. <o
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Next, you add ammonia. You will need to put the ammonia into a clean dropper bottle, Simply add drops of ammonia until your ammonia reading goes up to 5.0 ppm, which is pretty high. It took me about 30 minutes of adding ammonia and then testing for ammonia and then adding more drops and then testing for ammonia until I got the 5.0 ppm ammonia reading. Keep track of the total number of drops it took for you to get the desired 5.0 reading. After the first day in which you add ammonia, you should test for ammonia and nitrites every day. Then, every day, after testing for ammonia and nitrite, add the same number of drops of ammonia until you see a nitrite reading. On the first day that you actually see a nitrite reading, add half the number of drops of ammonia that you added on the first day, and keep adding that amount every day until you test and have zero ammonia and zero nitrites. At that point, you will need to do a massive water change. <o
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I did a 99% water change, and still had to do a few more partial water changes the same day, to get rid of the high nitrates readings in the tank. A fishless cycle uses a lot more ammonia then would normally develop with other methods, and therefore the leftover nitrates can be pretty high. My nitrate reading was 160 ppm when I was done with my first fishless aquarium cycle. Don’t add any fish to the aquarium until your nitrate reading is 10 ppm or less. You can do multiple water changes in the same day, until the desired nitrate reading of 10 or less is achieved. This works because the good bacteria is in the substrate, and in the filter, and remains after the water change. When you have zero ammonia, zero nitrites, and 10 or less nitrates, your aquarium is fully cycled, and ready to house your fish.<o
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It took me three and a half weeks to do my first fishless cycle. But If you follow the above recipe, and does all the things listed to speed up the cycling process could be able to get it done in 2 weeks. This has already turned into a book so we willtalk fish in the next installment
