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Fishless cycling

Greetings All, I have been doing a fishless cycle on my IBC system for the last 13 days. Ammonia came down, nitrites went way up and I started seeing a bit of nitrates. Today I checked my water. All are down to ZERO.

Not really sure what happened. Anybody have an idea? I did use PH up to bring the PH back up from 6.0. Hasn't bothered it before.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Veidel on July 14, 2014 at 7:04am

Do you have any plants in your system? And how much ammonia are you adding every day? 275 gallons?

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Permalink Reply by G. Michael Maynard on July 14, 2014 at 7:55am

Randal,

I am using a hydroponic PH called PH UP. I did ad more ammonia yesterday after the zero readings. The ammonia up to now had been running between 4 & 5 without adding any additional. I did use city water to top up.

Alex,

I do have a few plants in the system. Herbs, peppers, cukes. I added a couple of teaspoons yesterday. System is about 550 gallons with FT, beds and sumps.