On Jan 19, 10:25*am, Gill Passman
wrote:
Stumpy wrote:
I set up a small aquarium and used de-chlor. *Waited a week and bought a
goldfish. *After one week it had Ich, used malachite green and raised tank
temperature to 80 deg., it recovered. *Then at it's 2 week mark the goldfish
looked ill and had its tail corroding - I assumed with tailrot. *Took a
water sample to a petstore and wanted to buy an anti-biotic. *The aquariaist
said that the sample had high ammonia and that *it was not tailrot, would
not sell the antibiotic. *The fish died that night.

http://fins.actwin.com/mirror/begin-cycling.html

My question is - with no fish in the tank to continue producing nitrogen,
will the cycle shown in the graph on the link above continue as depicted?
Or will the cycle be interrupted until I install a new fish to produce new
nitrogen? *My preference would be to leave the tank alone until day 40 and
then feel much better about putting in a new fish.

Could not find a group where this would be on-topic, but it is related.

Your tank won't continue cycling if there is nothing in there to produce
waste. You could possibly continue cycling the tank without fish using a
procedure known as "fishless cycling" - this is where you add small
amounts of ammonia to the tank and continue testing as if there are fish
in there - once you reach zero nitrites and ammonia your tank will be
cycled - never tried it myself but there are a lot of people who swear
by this technique as it doesn't involve any stress to fish.

A good place to ask any of your questions is:-

http://groups.google.com/group/The-F...m?lnk=li&hl=en

HTH

Gill- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi Gill, the most recent articles on fishless cycling describe it
exactly as you're saying; replenishing the ammonia periodically
(daily). I think this does result in a larger bacterial culture, but
note that there is also a school of thought that levels of ammonia
which are too high can inhibit the bacteria which complete the process
taking the nitrite to nitrate (ref: never-ending cycle).

The original method which was the only one I've had personal
experience with, was using a single dose of ammonia to about 5ppm
(though the concentration doesn't seem to be very critical) and then
waiting for the process to complete itself. There is some concern
that in the resulting interval where there is no ammonia (only
nitrite), that some bacteria might die off, which is why the more
refined method described above was developed (I think by the same
fellow who documented the first method on the net).

Ultimately, both systems work, though I lean towards the simpler 2nd
method when trying to coach someone over the internet who may not have
the same inclination towards daily water testing.

cheers
NetMax