Phew. I Think It's Working!

Started cycling the "new" tank on

27th March adding 3ppm ammonia(tested using liquid test)

29th March Ammonia 3ppm, nitrite 2.0

31st March Ammonia .25, nitrite 5.0

1st April Ammonia 0, nitrite between 1 and 5ppm

2nd April Ammonia 0, nitrite more than  1ppm, less than 5.   Added 1/3 dose of ammonia

I started this tank off with a large piece of seeded sponge and an extra cartridge from my Nano tank.
It's obviously speeded up the process of this new tank but made no noticeable difference to the Nano tank which still reads zero ammonia despite the fact that it is temporarily overstocked.
These were extra bits of filter material that I had squeezed in. 

I don't know why I did it because I had already had the big "NO" regarding another tank.  I must have thought I could talk him round!! haha.

I am much more relaxed this time, even though I am anxious to get the tank finished so these poor fish can stretch their "legs".

I am preparing as much as I can in advance so that on the day it's a straight swap.
Won't be easy and I've told the other half to take himself off somewhere so he doesn't disturb me and he's also better sort himself out a meal so I expect he'll be off to Wetherspoons that day!!

I'm hoping that at this speed, providing nothing goes drastically wrong, then I may be able to do the swap by the middle of next week.
Fingers cross.
They won't in any case, be going in unless it's perfect all round. They seem happy enough. There's a bit of flaring going on but I don't know whether that's because there may be females in there. Difficult to tell them apart.

I'm afraid it doesn't work like that.
1 litre of water weighs 1000 g or in other words 1 million mg. 3mg ammonia in 1 million mg water is a concentration of 3ppm which is another way of saying that 3mg ammonia in 1 litre of water gives 3ppm
If your tank holds 100 litres, that is 300mg ammonia for 3ppm. If you half fill it to 50 litres, you'll have 150mg ammonia for 3ppm and grow enough bacteria to eat 150mg in 24 hours. When you fill the tank up to 100 litres, you'll still only have enough bacteria to eat 150mg ammonia in 24 hours, but that 150 mg is now in 100 litres, and so the concentration becomes 1.5ppm.
Double the volume and the concentration halves.

But don't panic yet.



Are you planning on moving all the fish into the bigger tank, and also moving all the decor and filter media? If you are, the bacteria you already have in the nano's media will make up what you need. If you move only half the media from the small tank you will have enough bacteria.
And it is quite possible that the fish you have will only make 1.5ppm ammonia per 24 hours. Even a fully stocked tank won't make quite 3ppm, that figure is chosen to be more than enough for a fully stocked tank.