cycling, fishless..

[FroggyFox]

not sure what the grayish stuff could be...but I would avoid doing any real cleaning until your tank is either well on its way to cycling or finished. You will need to do a huge water change at the end of this thing and you can clean all of that stuff up. Bottom line is that its really not hurting anything right now since you dont have any fish in there and it *might* set your cycle back...so I'd just leave everything as is.

Glad you finally see some movement!! Keep us posted with the levels...I'd check maybe day after tomorrow again...unless you just can't help yourself lol You can definitely make the whole thing seem longer by obsessing about it and testing non-stop. You only stopped using amquel and brought your ammonia level down about a week ago see?

[tameem]

Okay, well, here is the latest update:

Despite the small change we have noticed, We decided to really start over, do a massive water change like 95%.
I decided to do this for various reasons. First, I had added CopperSafe to my tank to kill these unsightly worms. This medication was in my water and I wnated to remove it.

I also was afraid that any leftover worms or parasties might be on decorations, so I wante dto remove all of them, put them in chlorine, and wash them well.

I had also added Stress zyme to the tank, unclear whether this helped.
I had greyish, particles on decorations; someone told me that it was just a type of algae, or something that started with a "d", and it really started to effect the appearance of our tank, so I removedthe decorations when I emptied the water, scrubbed them well.

Alot of debris coming thru the siphon when removing water, didn't look good at all, so we got rid of alot of that. We also had a little too much gravel, more then 60lbs and it was way too much, would make it too diffcult to clean with the siphon, and I never did like the color. It was too bright, I wanted to replace it with darker colored gravel. So i also removed almost half of the gravel.


So right now, we have effectively started over. I added three goldfish to the tank, and will cycle with this method.

[Airborneguy]

It's definately your patience level which is causing you so many problems. I have never heard of someone having so many problems with a tank which has not even had fish in it yet.

[Dan Steveo]

i would not be able to wait a month either. fish cycling is much much much much much faster. you get the idea. too much hassle with fishless cyling and i couldn't say it is traditional because in the wild there are always fish in the water. anyway i hope this all works out. keep us posted.

Dan.

[Airborneguy]

Fishless cycling actually takes less time, its just that you get to look at fish while you cycle with them. Once you do a fishless cycle, you can add a full load without any problems. My tanks always run smoothly... other than the occasional SW fish which dies right after I get it from the store, you will never see me come on here with a problem.

[Dan Steveo]

the only problems i get are with new fish too. and i did a fish cycle. my cycle took 2 weeks. after that no problems at all. thats was 2-3 years ago i think.

[tameem]

well, i rather go with the traditional method now. I got twelve danios, 6 zebra and 6 pearl today. We are all so excite dto see fish, thats how desperate we were!

So i wil cycle using this method, and even if it does take longer, we will have fish we can at least watch.

[Airborneguy]

That is a lot of fish to cycle with, even in a 55g.

[tameem]

oh boy! really?

[FroggyFox]

na, they're danios (small and clean)...that is a good amount. Do you have any frame of reference to say that is too many Airborne? I cycled a 10 with 3 danios, so if you multiply that, 12 in a 55 is less than 3/10 gallons