Fishless cycling my 75 gallon. Am i on the right track?

[spetzie]

Hello everyone

I am new to fish keeping and cichlids alike. I am currently cycling in my new 75 gallon tank with a fishless cycle and just want to check what I am doing is right. Currently (as of yesterday afternoon) my results are as follow: ammonia - 2, nitrite - 5, nitrate - 10-15. It is day 9 of cycling. Does these results sound correct?

My method of cycling is as follows. I am using a pure ammonia mix of 25% pure ammonia and the rest water that I bought from my local fish shop (made just for fishless cycling). I added enough to get my tank to 4-5 ppm of ammonia and waited. I also added some gravel in some media bags from my newly cycled 35 gallon (I didn't want to take any filter media or more gravel as this tank has only been cycled for around 1 week and I didn't want to upset anything - used fish to cycle ). I then checked my ph which was low (6.2) and raised it to 7.5. My tanks are also at around 28-29 degrees.

I waited until the ammonia dropped to 1 (around day 6) and added more ammonia to reach 4-5ppm. On day 8 I did the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test and the test results were what I posted earlier.

Does everything sound right? I plan to re-test ammonia this afternoon and if it is under 1ppm add ammonia again to reach the 4-5ppm mark. If ammonia is not under 1ppm than I plan to wait until it does.

Any advice would be great. I have been keeping cichlids for a whole 4 weeks (first 35 gallon I cycled) and wanted to try and do a fishless cycle this time on my larger 75 gallon. I plan to move my mbuna over to this new tank as soon as it has cycled and have a male mbuna show tank.

Thanks in advance

[Josh]

Sounds like it is going well.

Can you tell us more about the special water you bought? Sounds suss to me.

[Buccal]

The ammonia he bought is likely from a shop,that has their own quarantine room.

A experienced shop owner will source pure ammonia from a chemical supplier.

As we know the nitrogen cycle must always be within balance.

But a quarantine room may be empty or low in stock,,,, then a large order may be ordered of fish.

The sudden influx of stock will send nitrogen cycle out of balance and kill all new arrivals.

A experience person can measure out perfectly and time perfectly the use of ammonia to boost the beneficial bacteria to the numbers needed to adequately support the sudden increase of bioload.

So just as the ammonia subsides to just only readable (very very minutely), then the next day the stock arrives.