Thanks all. I think I’ll stick to my local MA, but I’ll go in mid-week and hope they don’t remember exactly when I was last there
Hi Aquamaid, I am quite patient and extremely stubborn, so probably would have waited 500 days if necessary
. I suppose there is a point when it makes sense to change tack if it is not working. But I was happy I stuck with it. It feels like a job well done, and you do see a few threads where people’s fish are struggling a bit with fish-in cycling.
It didn’t go entirely smoothly for me. I had to go away for work for a few days when I was near the end, and doing daily tests. When I got back the ammonia was not dropping as fast, so I went back to a partial dose. I lost a week, but did get back on track.
Two other things I noticed in case they help anyone else:
- I bought some ammonia from Homebase. It said it was 9.5%, but unless there was a chemical reaction I have not thought of, it was actually a fair bit stronger, and I needed to use quite a bit less than the maths said.
- I had a lot of trouble with algae, it killed some Tiger Lily’s and left everything else looking a bit mangy. I probably wouldn’t put the plants in until I got to the mid-point of the cycle next time. I probably made a mistake putting in some fertiliser balls at the start on the advice of my lfs too, since I think they were feeding the algae more than the plants - particularly in the diatom phase.
Thanks for the interest in my Barbs Colin, I’ll share my experience in a new thread.