First Proper Fishless Cycle (am I doing it right?)
I have done a Fishless cycle before, but never like this so I want to make sure i am doing it correctly.
I have a 29gallon tall tank that I setup on Sunday. During the first 24hrs the only thing I did was add water conditioner to take out chlorine. At 24 hrs my tank was 85 degrees (turned it up to help with the cycle) ammonia was at 0.5ppm and pH was 7.6 but when I did a high pH test it was 7.4. Is 7.4 the actual pH? I am testing using API FreshWater Test Kit. So At 7am on Monday I added ammonia to make it 2ppm because I want to add fish gradually at 9pm I added Tetra SafeStart.
The next day at 7am the ammonia was still 2ppm which I figured was normal because it was less than 12hrs from adding the bacteria. At 6pm ammonia was 0.5, nitrate was 5.0ppm high pH was 7.4 and nitrite was 0. Which I thought interesting because it had converted it to nitrate and had no nitrite at all. I dosed it at that time to 2ppm of ammonia.
Yesterday at 7am ammonia was 1ppm and I dosed it to 2ppm. At 5:30 pm nitrite was 0 ammonia was 1ppm, and nitrate was 5.0. The only time I dosed was that morning
This morning ammonia was 0.5ppm and I dosed it to 2ppm.
I just want to make sure I am doing this correctly. I am not sure if I should be dosing once at day in the morning or in the morning and at night.
