PonderEthereal

In Cycling the Tank, I covered HOW to cycle a tank and what it means and how to gauge the process. Here is what my tank cycle looked like for a 30 gallon tank.

I left out the days where there was no change. There were fluctuation sin my readings on some days which over all amounted to nothing and which can probably be chalked up to inaccurate measurements.

Day 1 :

Day 2 : added one fish
Day 4 : still no change - added a second fish to tip the balance
Day 7 : The ammonia rose to a 1 - and we’re off!
Day 9 : The ammonia rose to 1.5 and we look like this :

Day 11 : The ammonia rose to 2
Day 12 : The ammonia was holding steady at 2 and 2 is a pretty high amount. I want the fish to live so I added 3 quarts of water to top the tank off and hopefully dilute it a bit. This brought the ammonia back down to 1.5.
Day 13 : back up to a 2 in ammonia but also to .1 in nitrite. So we look like this

This is where I started checking the water multiple times a day because the high ammonia and nitrite levels are toxic to the fish. I want to do my best to control them to keep the fish alive while still letting them cycle for the longevity of the aquarium.

Day 14 :

Uh oh! Better do a slight water change! I don’t want to get rid of the ammonia altogether because nitrite creating bacteria are starting to colonize - but the fish need to live. I change out 1 gallon of water. That brings the ammonia level down to 2 again.

Day 16 : We got a blip on nitrate!

Day 17 11AM : I got my GH and KH hardness tests (finally!)

Gah! Poor fish! The combo of ammonia, higher nitrite AND nitrate AND such hard water could easily be lethal. I decided that my best option all around was to do a partial water change (my tap tested at a much lower GH than the tank, which is unusual). I changed out 7 gallons of water, cleaned the gravel, which stirred some stuff up (who knew two fish under 1.5 inches could poop so much!) and added the appropriate amount of Stress Coat
. That left me with this at approximately 1PM :

I’m not sure what accounts for the HIGHER nitrate count other than possibly that stuff was stirred up from the gravel into the water when I did the water change. However, the GH, ammonia and nitrite came down. Everything was so borderline dangerous (or borderline successful, depending upon which angle you look at) that I kept an eye on the fish and tested twice more this day.

Day 19 :

BINGO! Almost done cycling. Changed out half the tank water, added Stress Coat and added two fish. This is about what would happen to the tank when they are added… might as well.

Day 20 :

Day 21 :

And, we’re pretty much done. At this point, do regular water changes every few days until the nitrate level drops.

Next : stocking the tank