Cycling, Day 8
Tested my water today. Here are the results:
Test results on 26/01/2015, approximately 72 hours after the last addition of pureed seafood mix.
Ammonia:0ppm
Nitrite:0ppm
Nitrate:0ppm
Phosphate: 8-10ppm
pH:8
kH: 9
Calcium: 620ppm
So ANN has now zeroed out, which is great. Phosphate is still high, around 8-10ppm.
Given that the microbes I am aiming to grow seems to have been established, I have proceeded to test their filtration capability. This process requires ghost feeding, but of course, I left my fish food with the caretaker of my fishies... elsewhere.
So instead, I have this:
Hikari Sinking Cichlid Gold Pellets! Cichlids love 'em.
Anyways, took out the equivalent to how much I feed my fish:
A lot? A little? I dunno. My fish eats this much. So I feed 'em this much. 'Just right' then.
And mix it in some tank water:
The proper way would be to grind it up, but I was lazy.
And add it to the aquarium:
Eat, microbes! EAT. You too, macroalgae. Go go go!
It would be much better to break up the food, to better distribute it throughout the aquarium. This is because when fish eat 'em, the food do get digested and turned into poop, which well, breaks apart much easier.
However, it is not the end of the world, using unbroken pellets. Just gotta manually break them up later on, when they soften. Every 30 minutes or so.
I'm not going to show myself doing that though. >_> I am not going to update this tank journal every half an hour, detailing how it was broken up.
But you get the idea.
Anyways, will test the water tomorrow to see how it fares. If ANN zeroes out by then, then the aquarium has gone through the microbe propagation phase successfully. :) Of course, I still have the phosphate problem to deal with.
My macroalgae is still recovering. And microalgae is refusing to grow quickly, for whatever reason. I would have thought my tank would be covered with diatoms by now... with all that phosphate. Maybe nitrate is the limiting factor? XD
Arghhhhh.
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