How to Cycle a Fish Tank Without Fish

The process of cycling a tank is always daunting to those first starting out, but with these simple steps, you will be well on your way to success! You first need to set up your fish tank appropriately, see http://missfishy.tripod.com/ to get an idea of what size tank you need and what type of filter to buy as well as where to get your master test kit. You will need tests for Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. These can all be purchased separately, or you can save some money and buy them all together in a master kit.

Next, you'll need to find 100% pure ammonia. This can usually be found at a hardware store(not a grocery store). It must say 100% pure ammonia on the bottle and most bottles have a customer service number you can call if you aren't sure. It can NOT have any soap suds, fragrances, or coloring, these will all kill your fish!

Next, you need to raise the temperature in your fish tank to about 85 degrees. This is a bit hot for most fish, but since you do not yet have fish in your tank, this is okay. Open up your 100% ammonia and drip in a couple of drops depending on how large your tank is, usually around 5 drops per 10 gallons of water depending on the strength of your ammonia.

Add the ammonia drops, then sit back for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, take our your ammonia test kit and test your tank water. The reading should be 5-8ppm. These levels are deadly and toxic for fish, but since you have not yet added fish, it is ok.

Now for the hard part, you need to sit back for a week and let your tank do its thing. After a week, take out both your ammonia and nitrite test kits and run a test. You should see that your ammonia level has gone down and begin seeing a nitrite reading. If you see this, add a few more drops of ammonia to "feed" the nitrite, then sit back for 5 more days. Again, take out your test kits, all three of them this time, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. At this point you should definitely be seeing nitrite readings and possibly nitrate.

Continue adding ammonia drops every couple days as needed until you see there are 0ppm of nitrite and you are seeing some nitrate readings, usually around 20-40ppm are safe for fish. Your tank is fully cycled when you can add some drops of ammonia to your tank in the morning and by the evening the ammonia reading is again 0ppm.

Now, the fun part! You finally can safely add fish to your fish tank! Simply do a water change of about 50-75% of your tank water, lower the water temperature to an appropriate temp for the type of fish you plan on keeping, and add them! Make sure to add only one or two fish at a time to make sure your newly cycled tank can keep up with the waste the fish are producing. Wait a week between adding each fish and make sure not to overstock your fish tank, see http://missfishy.tripod.com/ for a stocking guide. Good luck!For a more in depth explanation of the tank cycling process, see http://missfishy.tripod.com/