Intro And My Fishy Project - Cora

That sounds like the stuff from your sister's tank is working. Check your nitrite level as the two colonies don't always keep in sync. And also your nitrate level, remembering to subtract any nitrate in your tap water so you can tell if the tank nitrate has gone up.

If you find nitrite is at the top of the scale at any stage, it is worth diluting a sample of tank water with tap water, say 50:50 or even 25:75 tank:tap. This won't give a very accurate result but you'll be able to tell if the tank nitrite is under 15 or over 15.

Using mature media or squeezings does make the cycle go faster, so you don't need to stick 100% to the method. I would test again tomorrow - 48 hours after adding ammonia - and see what the results are.

If you get ammonia under 0.75 and nitrite over 2.0, go from stage 6 in the method.
If ammonia is below 0.25 and nitrite below 1.0, go from stage 10.

Especially if nitrate is increasing.

Hmmmm.....

OK first thing to ask, did you shake the one bottle the instructions say to? That is very important. In fact, shake it more than it says to. Failure to shake it is the most common cause of false nitrate readings.

If you did shake it, the ammonia must have gone somewhere.
How are the plants doing, nice and lush? Plants actually prefer ammonia as a food source. It is possible to do something called a silent cycle. This is using plants to remove the ammonia and nitrite is not made. But its main requirement is lots, and I mean lots, of healthy well growing plants. The danger comes in assuming that a few straggly plants will replace the need for filter bacteria, but provided the plants are numerous and growing well, they can indeed replace the need for filter bacteria.
Your plants are all quite small at the moment, but there are lots of them. Work on the assumption that a lot of the ammonia was taken up by the plants and the rest by your sister's contributions. And that there are enough nitrite eaters to remove the nitrite made from the ammonia the plants didn't get. Then possibly the plants removed the nitrate made by the nitrite eaters.

Whatever is actually happening, I would keep on with the fishless cycle till you are sure. The last thing you need is to assume the cycle has finished and get fish only to find ammonia and/or nitrite showing up. By using the bottle of ammonia instead of fish to add ammonia to the tank, nothing will die as a result of something going awry.

Paddy found it did take a short while to cycle even using his friend's mature media, longer than a few days.

Since you added a lot of ammonia at the start, either do a 50% water change (and I have a 180 litre tank so I realise that is not something anyone would want to do) or wait it out.
For the latter, since your ammonia reading is what the fishless cycling method starts with, go from the beginning. But since you did use something to kick start the cycle, instead of testing every third day test every 2 days. Once the ammonia level drops below 0.75, report back with your nitrite and nitrate readings and we can see what to do next.

Cheers, Fiona. Cheers, Sue.

I won't change the water just yet because I haven't got an efficient syphon for that tank. I've got some much larger tubing in the post which I can run from the tank right out into the garden drain. So I'll wait it out for a few days and test again.

I'll report back with readings tomorrow.

I want to send a proper photo of the tank but the water isn't very clear. It's not particularly cloudy and you can't see particulate matter, but it's definitely not clear. I think it's still just settling in. When it gets dark later I'll try another pic.

The cloudiness could be a bacterial bloom which is very common in new tanks, it should clear eventually. It was probably triggered when the soil got disturbed.

Personally being a glowlight tetra owner I'd dump those and increase the cardinals. Glowlights are quite pretty but they tend to lurk in the plants a lot and you don't really see them, a shoal of 20 cardinals is a pretty impressive sight and one I'm aiming for. I've got 11 in the QT and I'll be getting more eventually.

One of the shops I visit has a square 300l tank filled with plants, a large shoal of cardinals, a small shoal of boesemani rainbow fish and dwarf suckermouths and it's very very striking.

I've got some much larger tubing in the post which I can run from the tank right out into the garden drain.

ooo - don't waste the water. Put it on the veg bed, house plants or flower bed. My dwarf apple tree in a container thrives on the tank water change water.

Just a thought!

20 cardinal tetras would make an impressive shoal. I saw a large shoal of Rosy Tetras in a heavily planted tank and they looked stunning.

It's now about 66 hours since the initial (over)dose of Ammonia.

Ammonia: 2.0 ppm (perhaps slightly more)
Nitrites: 0.5 ppm (perhaps slightly more)
Nitrates: 0 ppm (the reading only displays increments of 5ppm so it could be somewhere between 0 and 4 I suppose...)

Will do.

I've just changed 10% of the water and topped up with 20-30% fresh (the tank wasn't full originally). It's still not full now but the ammonia should be much more diluted. I'll test ammonia again today out of curiosity to see what the dilution has done. Then I'll keep testing every 48 hours, cheers.