Saltwater Fishless Cycle Question.

[dlee9707]

So, i was talking to the man that owns the LFS here. I told him i was doing a fishless cycle with pure ammonia.

He went on using big words, then put it in smaller words after i asked him to. he said adding large quantities once a day will kill the nitrite-nitrate bacteria, and in an established tank the constant low ammounts will do it better.

Is this true?

The people there i thought were pretty knowlegable, but the one girl that works there told me she's never heard of using amonia to cycle a tank.

I would imagine this also applys to fresh water?




I guess a good alternative is the decaying shrimp method, should i use that instead for a more constant source?

[Chitown1]

I have never in 16 years heard of using ammonia to cycle a tank, I have heard of using a shrimp, but personally I have never done that either, I use time and substrate and/or rock from a existing tank.

[Radom]

Never heard of using ammonia to cycle also. I mean you are trying to eliminate any ammonia so why would you add it in the 1st place.

[Loman]

If you consider the nitrogen cycle you must have ammonia to support a culture of bacteria that Can convert it from ammonia to nitrite. You must also have nitrite present to feed the bacteria culture that converts nitrite to nitrate. I believe this holds true regardless of whether it is a salt tank or fresh. The older way of thinking in fresh water was to grab a hardy fish to be the source of ammonia. Decaying left over food and fish wastes would start the cycle. I am relatively new to salt but the partial die off on live rock creates a spike in ammonia that will likely get that tank going. The latest thinking I have heard/read suggest using pure ammonia to get things started (particularly in freshwater). If you put all the stuff in a tank but never introduce any source of ammonia the cycle will not start. It needs something from material out of an old tank, pure ammonia, live rock die off -something.

And Random when you cycle the tank you want to see the ammonia and nitrite spike before it goes to zero so that you are sure it can be naturally neutralized in the tank.

[Radom]

I understand that Loman. But still seems strange to me to add ammonia to get "things started". Even if you add snails to uncured tank they will die from scarsity of food, decay and create ammonia then bacteria will break it down, anyway so I guess my point is that I have never seen actual ammonia being added to a tank.

[Chitown1]

After doing some research, it is a method used to cycle a tank, not one I ever heard of but as I have mentioned in previous posts, I still learn every day. Here is the best way to cycle with ammonia from my 2 hour research binge.

1. Introduce pure ammonia to cycle the aquarium. You can buy unscented ammonia with no additives from a supermarket or a bottle of ammonium chloride.
2. Add ammonia from a dropper, 3 - 5 drops per 10 gallons of water per day to get and maintain a reading of 5 ppm.
3. Initially there will be no nitrites. Monitor nitrites daily and continue the daily ammonia dose until you get a nitrite reading. At this point you can reduce the daily amount of ammonia to 2 - 3 drops per 10 gallons. Continue this until both the ammonia test and the nitrite test reads 0 ppm.
4. This method can take as little as three weeks or up to six weeks to complete the nitrification cycle, but adding a starter culture as described above can speed the time up considerably.
5. When the cycle is complete reduce the temperature slowly back to 74? to 80? F(26? - 28? C). Reducing it quickly can stress the bacteria.
6. Do a major water change, about 90%, and add activated carbon to remove any possible additives which might have been in the ammonia

I personally would not use this method as I have enough material from existing tanks to use to establish any additional tanks, but it could be a option for a first tank.

[dlee9707]

This would be my first saltwater tank, but also adding old material won't stop an ammonia spike unless you really add a whole filters worth of bio material, it will make it shorter and smaller though. Anyway, i really wanta know if someone could answer my question, can the spike i cause from adding once daily instead of slowly and surely kill the nitrite-nitrate bacteria?

I added 1 shrimp to the 10 gallon salt and 4 to the 65 fresh yesterday. With any luck they'll get things going.

The LFS i like isn't getting more lr in till wednesday, so i'll wait till then or longer to get some i guess.

[Loman]

Random we are really arguing over what the source of ammonia is - either pure ammonia, fish wastes, or in your example a decaying dead snail. All of them produce ammonia to feed the bacteria colony so it grows. In a saltwater tank I would opt for the ammonia that is produced in getting it set up with the partial die off of the live rock and sand. It is effectively the same as taking material from another tank which works well too. The one thing that is important is even though you can not detect ammonia in an established tank there is a constant supply of it. If you remove all of the ammonia the bacteria would die and you will have to recycle.

[Radom]

Think you are missing my point. I'm not arguing that ammonia is not needed but the source of the ammonia. With addition of pure ammonia you need to be exact how much is enough and not overdose. To me it seems a lot of safer to get ammonia thru a biological source such as dead/decomposing matter.

[Ares24]

if your going to add pure ammonia make sure you dont add a lot, because it CAn kill your present bacteria in the tank.

like it was said above, add 3-5 drops per 10g and than add no more. when that ammonia goes down to 0ppm raise it back up. as soon as your ammonia starts going down, you should see some nitrites. when you start seeing those nitrites i would personally do about 3 drops per 10g.