Tetra Safe Start

[amynmitchell]

Hi all,

On Wednesday night I decided to start a fishless cycle on my new tank. I got the ammonia up to 4ppm with pure ammonia and then let it sit for an hour or two. I then added a bottle of Tetra Safe Start for a thirty gallon tank. I put in the heater and heated it to 84 degrees.

Yesterday, I decided to test the water for the heck of it and see if the Safe Start was working. And here are the results:

Ammonia 2ppm

Nitrite 1.6ppm

Nitrate 20 ppm

I'm pretty amazed. I started a fishless cycle on a ten gallon and I got the nirtrites really high within a week, but even four to five weeks later wasn't registering nitrate at all. It seems this stuff is working.

Does anybody have any ideas at what point I should add more ammonia? I'm guessing once it stops showing I want to keep feeding the cycle until I get a fish and then I'll want to do a big water change and go from there.

Amy

[fortunefaded]

Am having a simliar situation at my end. I've had my tank set up for a week and I've got niti at 0.8 and NitA at 50. No idea why, I just got my ammonia today as well.

Hope someone else can give you a better answer yer lookin' fer.

[lynda441]

I'd say that as long as your nitrates stay up around 20, just let things go until your ammonia and nitrites disappear for a "fully cycled tank." If the nitrates drop too low and you still have ammonia and/or nitrites, I might bump it up by adding just a little ammonia. Also, once the tank is fully cycled and until you get a fish, I might add just a little ammonia to keep the cycle going.

[amynmitchell]

Well, I was itching to test it again, but decided to give it until this morning to see what happened and guess what? From what, I can see it is fully cycled. O ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 20 nitrates.

I'm headed to Chicago in the morning, so my plan is to have Geoff add a small amount of ammonia each day. Hopefully, the cycle will keep going and I can do a big water change when I get home and get ready for a goldie.

I'm pretty impressed with this stuff. I was prepared to wait weeks.

[CountryLovah]

Amy that's amazing... I am pretty sure that the other day when I was at a new pet store I found (at the beach) the girl I talked to recommended that kind to me. I can't remember, but the name sounds very familiar and I knew it was not one of the products I was testing in my experiment. The store closes early on Sundays I think, but I am going to call and talk to her again and double check on it. : )

[CountryLovah]

Oh yeah. I think if he adds it every couple of days even, it will be okay. After my fish were sick, I kept a tank cycled for a few months just by adding ammonia up to approx 2 ppm every 2-3 days.. Every bottle of ammonia is different, but after doing a little testing with MY bottle I found that I could figure out how much to use each time. For MY bottle this little formula ended up working. Yours might be different depending on the concentration of ammonia.

2 drops ammonia x ________ (number of gallons of water) x _________ (number of ppm you want the ammonia raised by) = number of drops to use

So for my tank I wanted to raise my 29 gallon to 2 ppm so I would do 2 drops x 29 x 2 = 116 drops.

Then I figured out that with my dropper 1 ml= approx 18 drops. So 116 drops/18= 6.44 ml So every few days I would add that much ammonia...

[amynmitchell]

Fancy formula! My ammonia took almost seven capfuls to start it up to 4ppm. So my calculations are to add one capful a day. It seems like a pretty weak solution. Okay, I'm headed to bed...my Super Shuttle is at 7:30am!