Hello

I'm starting out my first Oscar Tank and I decided to do the Fishless Cycle before I buy the Oscars.
It’s been around 2.5 weeks into the Cycle and I’ve recently added some Fish food Flakes to encourage Ammonia and speed things up.

My plans are to cycle the tank for 4 weeks, however half way in; I don’t see signs of good bacteria. And the Food Flakes sink to the bottom developed Fungus around them. Shouldn’t these Flakes get broken up?

My canister Media consist of BIO BALLS – Sponges - Activated Carbon - Breathing Bio Rings - Nitrite & Nitrate Sponge.

Any comment or Advise will be appreciated.

The easiest way to do fishless cycle is using ammonia solution. You will find that at the household cleaning products alley in any supermarket.

Make sure the ammonia solution you get has no additives or surfactants. Just shake the bottle, if bubbles form as in shaking a drinking water bottle, it's safe to use. Otherwise discard and try another brand.

I would remove all the nitrite and nitrate buffering filtering media from your bio balls.

Add measured amounts of ammonia solution to your tank and measure for ammonia. We are determining by trial and error the amount of that particular ammonia solution that will bring dissolved ammonia in your tank to the 4 to 6ppm range. Take your time. Once you reach the target, write down the amount of ammonia solution you used.

Wait 24 hours. Measure your ammonia. If below 4ppm, add to reach our target range again; if still in range, do nothing and wait till next day.

Keep adding ammonia solution as needed. In a few days, you will notice that your ammonia concentration drops significantly in 24 hours, this could be noticed even in shorter intervals, e.g. 12 hours. At that point your nitrites are surely spiking. From now on, you keep adding ammonia until you reach the 2 to 3ppm range (half of previous range).

Wait 24 hours, add ammonia as needed to reach 2 to 3ppm. Keep watching your nitrite spike. It may look like forever, but in a week or so, your nitrite spike will fade down. Once you read less than 1ppm of nitrites, begin checking for nitrates. Keep up with the ammonia feeding up to 2 or 3 ppm.

You will get readings of Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0, and Nitrates present at whatever range. At this point your tank is cycled. Do as huge as you wish water change, being careful to introduce only treated water into your tank, and add your Oscars.

To speed up the cycle you could do the following:
Turn heater up towards 84F. Keep lights on 24/7 if you have plants. Increase dissolved oxygen by manipulating water agitation and adding complementary aeration with airpump-airstones.

If you have a healthy tank, take some seeded filter media, substrate, plants or decor to aid seeding bacteria in your new tank.

Glad you are going fishless cycling. That's how I have cycled all my tanks. No one took more than 13 days.

Pepe
Santo Domingo