Day 26 and 27 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Happiness is a cycled aquarium!

I tested the water for nitrites last night and came up with none. Ammonia was also at zero. So, after doing a happy dance, I informed my three-year old son that we would be getting fish this weekend. He then did a happy dance -- he's been wanting to get fish for a while now, and has been very patient.

So, last night I added some more ammonia to keep all of the bacteria happy and since I got zero readings again tonight, I will add some more ammonia in a few minutes (before turning in for the night).

Goodnight!

Day 21,22,23,24, and 25 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

The morning after the last post, I added 1/2 a teaspoon of ammonia to the tank and some Cycle. I have not touced the tank again until this morning, in the dim hope that if I let the nitrite bacteria catch up to all of the nitrtite that was being produced by the ammonia bacteria then the tank would finally cycle. Of course, the nitrite levels remain high, and the ammonia bacteria continues to do it's job well. Because I am worried about he ammonia consuming bacteria not being well-enough fed, I added a 1/2 teaspoon of ammonia to the water this morning.

I may try a water change next on the tank to see if that helps at all. Maybe if I greatly reduce the nitrites in the tank and then slowly add ammonia again, the tank will actually cycle. It could be that I have added too much ammonia to the water so the nitrite bacteria can't keep up. So, if I have time, maybe tomorrow night I will do a substantial water change on the aquarium.

My plan is to get fish whether the tank is cycled or not this weekend. Let's hope I get there with it.

Day 20 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Yawn. Wish I had more to report on this one. The nitrite levels remain high and the ammonia is not registering. Oh and the algae continues to grow.

This may be a the humane way to cycle a tank for the fish, but it is dulls-ville for the aquarist. I am tired of waiting! But I will continue to wait a bit more and see how it goes. I'll add some more ammonia in the morning and maybe some more Cycle too. Might as well give that a try since I have some left over.

In other news, I added about 3 gallons of water tonight because so much had evaporated from the tank.

About.com's fish site is RSS-able

About.com's freshwater fish area has an rss feed and the site seems to be treated like a blog. I wouldn't call it true aquarium blogging though -- soo corporate.

Anyone else out there?

Any Aquarium Blogs Out There??

Part of my job is to explore new software that can be used in Higher Education -- especially in the Humanities. So, I am very interested in blogging.

Recently, as you can tell by this blog, I have let this interest bleed over into my personal life. I originally started this blog as a personal journal of my work on my aquariums. It occured to me that there must be other interesting blogs out there that are discussing how to raise fish in a aquarium. I searched and searched, but have found very few. So, some of this blog will now be dedicated to finding what reading materials are available to aquarists in the blogosphere.

Day 15,16,17,18, and 19 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Still at it and nothing new to report.

I should mention for my own record keeping that I was gone from April 18-19, so missed a day. But the cycling process pretty much remains the same.

If I was only concerned about ammonia, I would be golden. The beneficial bacteria is doing it's job in that department. My main question: When is the nitrite going to decline!

Day 12,13, and 14 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

I haven't written much because the pattern has pretty much been the same over the past few days. The ammonia doesn't register on the test kits, but the nitrite in the tank remains high. Each morning, after testing the night before, I have been adding 1/4 teaspoon of ammonia.

It is interesting to note that I noticed some algae in the tank starting on day 13. It could be that the nitrite is being converted to nitrate now. I think algae thrives on nitrate. If that is true, then that is a good sign.

Day 11 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Extremely high levels of nitrite tonight and no measurable ammonia. I added another 1/2 teaspoon of ammonia, which brought the water up to the 1-2 ppm of ammonia in the tank. I'm starting to get impatient! When are the nitrite levels going to taper off!

Days 7,8,9, and 10 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Got a bit behind on these posts because I went away for a few days, and forgot to post on day 7 (Thursday). So, here's what has happened so far:

Day 7: The ammonia levels were not registering again, but the nitrite levels remain high. So I added another 1/4 teaspoon of ammonia to the tank.

Day 8 (Friday): Around 12:30, I checked the levels again before leaving town for the weekend. Ammonia was again not registering, but the nitrite levels remain high. To keep the bacteria going while I was gone, I added a 1/2 teaspoon of ammonia to the tank.

Day 9: Uknown. I was out of town.

Day 10: I measured the levels as soon as I got back, and discovered that the nitrite levels continue to remain high, but that the ammonia is immeasurable. I still haven't added anything to the tank, but as soon as I post this, I will go and add another 1/2 teaspoon of ammonia to the tank. It seems like I should continue this tactic until the nitrite in the aquarium drops -- i.e. feed the ammonia consuming bacteria and hoping the nitrite consuming bacteria will catch up soon.

Day 6 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

If there was any ammonia in the tank today, it was unmeasurable. The nitrite is still very high in the tank (up around 5 ppm I would say), so even though the ammonia consuming bacteria seem to be in place, the nitrite consuming bacteria are not quite there yet.

To continue feeding the ammonia consuming bacteria, I added another 1/4 teaspoon of ammonia today. I will check the tank tomorrow and possibly Friday, but then will be away Friday night, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. So, hopefully there will be enough ammonia in the tank to keep the cycling process going.

Day 5 of Cycling the 55 Gallon: Part 2

I decided to play it on the safe side -- instead of 1/4 teaspoon, I only added 1/8 teaspoon. I did this in part because the test kit looked like it was showing a little more ammonia than I originally thought was there. I don't want to overwhelm the tank with ammonia. I'll test it again tomorrow.

Day 5 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

Tonight the ammonia levels are minimal -- they hardly register with my test kit. The nitrite levels, however, are way up there. I'd say the might even be as high as 5 ppm. (The test kit that I'm using doesn't seem to be all that accurate at high levels.) So, though I have a good population of ammonia consuming bacteria, I still have to wait for the levels of nitrite consuming bacteria to build up.

Since the ammonia levels are so low, I have decided add a small amount of ammonia (to keep the bacteria well-fed). I added 1/2 a teaspoon last time, so I think I will try only a 1/4 teaspoon this time.

I will continue to monitor the nitrite levels. When those have abated, it may be time to add fish!

Day 4 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

I forgot to record the ammonia and nitrite levels last night:

ammonia: between .5 and 1 ppm
nitrite: between 2 and 5 ppm (basically pretty high)

I am in the middle of doing the tests for Day 5 right now and will record them in 10 minutes or so.

Day 3 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

I just checked the ammonia and nitrite levels in the aquarium -- at the same time, but a little earlier because the time has just changed. (Spring forward an hour!) Here are the results:

Ammonia = 1.0 ppm
Nitrite = .5 ppm

So the ammonia is gradually decreasing and the nitrite is on the increase. I have decided not to add any more ammonia to the water at this time. I am planning on waiting until the level of ammonia has dropped to 0 before adding more.

I am hoping that the bacteria that convert nitrite into nitrate are starting to grow in the tank at this point. I will check the tank at approximately the same time tomorrow.

Day 2 of Cycling the 55 Gallon

A little over 24 hours after adding the Cycle and ammonia to the aquarium, I checked the ammonia levels and the nitrite levels. The ammonia has not changed noticably since yesterday. It is still somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm, perhaps closer to one. The nitrite levels have increased to .25 ppm, though. I take this to be an encouraging sign. The beneficial bacteria are doing their job and converting the ammonia to nitrite. I have added nothing else to the aquarium at this point, and plan on checking the levels about the same time tomorrow night.

Starting a 55 Gallon Aquarium

I just started setting up my 55 gallon aquarium. Actually, it has been quite a few weeks since I began the project, but I'm finally getting around to cycling it. I am hoping that in a couple weeks that the tank will be ready to go.

This is not my first aquarium; I've been keeping fish since I was a kid (and I'm in my 30s now). Where I last lived, I had four aquariums going -- a 55, a 20 long, a 10, and a 5 gallon. I also had a 2.5 gallon tank on my desk at work. I am mostly interested in cichlids, though I enjoy killifish, catfish, and tetras as well.

My 3-year old son and I are working on this aquarium together. We started a few weeks ago by looking through some fish pictures in some aquarium books that I have. We settled on some fish from Lake Tanganika -- partially because I have had success with Lake Malawi mbunas in the past and would like to try some fish from the other rift lake. Also, my son liked the bright colors of some of the fish from that lake. We will probably end up keeping some small Julidochromis and/or some Neolamprologus species. It will depend on what we can find and what will best get along with each other. Personally, I am partial to Neolamprologus brichardi, Neolamprologus leleupi, and Julidochromis transcriptus.

After we had picked out the fish we were aiming for we started to set up the aquarium. First, we went out to a local state park and collected rocks (for caves). Then, we searched around a bit for a decent looking gravel in a large bag -- not easy to find. Most fish stores try to scam you with measly 5 pound bags of ugly colored gravel. (I should say right now, I go for a natural look in the aquarium.) We finally found a 25 pound bag at a Petco (not my favorite pet store, but that is another post), and bought two of them.

We put the rocks on the glass, then filled the tank with gravel. (Having the rocks right on the glass prevents cichlids from digging out underneath them and toppling rock formations -- and cracking the aquarium!) We probably ended up using 1 1/2 of the bags of gravel and many rocks. We filled up the water and left it for a few hours.

Without my son, I started the heater in the aquarium (set at 78 degrees) and hooked up a Fluval 304 canister filter to the aquarium. In the filter, I put crushed coral to try to bring up the pH. Tanganikan cichlids require hard alkaline water, and our tap water is about average. I tested it the other day -- 7.5 pH, 4 degrees GH. So, hopefully the coral in the filter will bring the pH up to where it needs to be, if not, I can add some baking soda to bring up the pH, as I often did when keeping mbunas. The filter has been running in the tank for 2-3 weeks now.

Today I started the cycling process using the technique outlined in this article. I started by putting 6 capfuls of Cycle (TM) into the aquarium, followed by 1/2 teapsoon of straight Amonia. I let it sit for a few hours and then tested the ammonia level. It is right up where they should be (according to the above article): between 1 and 2 ppm.

After reading the instructions, on Cycle (TM), I discovered that I should have put double the amount that I originally put in the tank. So a few hours after adding the ammonia, I added another 6 capfuls of Cycle (TM).

The only other change I made to the tanks was to add an airstone to help facilitate the growth of bacteria in the aquarium.

I plan on monitoring the aquarium for ammonia and eventually nitrite levels. And I will continue to post progress reports to this blog for this and future fish tanks.