Hello, I was told to come join this forum because there is good advice given here. I have a 1.5 gallon nano I'm attempting to set up, it will eventually just be for a couple of shrimps and maybe mystery snail. The tank gets natural sunlight from my window and 2 hr of 40W desk light at night. Right now I'm in the cycling stage.
In the tank I have guppy grass, hornwort, duckweed, loads of water lettuce and a floating plant with round leaves (not sure what it is) I got from a established tank. Its pretty packed since I read shrimp love plants.
I am using pure ammonia and dosed the tank to around 3ppm.
However, it appears the plants are just sucking up the ammonia. Within a day, my ammonia read 1ppm and than within other it became 0.25ppm. However, I have no nitrite or nitrate output. So I re-dosed it to 5ppm yesterday and today its 3ppm, but again, no nitrite or nitrate at all...
I'm not sure if the tank is partially cycled and the bacteria is actually converting to nitrate and the plants just been adsorbing it completely or if the plants are actually absorbing the ammonia and the tank is not cycled.
Some help with this? Should I keep adding ammonia and hope for some signs of nitrite/nitrate? Should I remove the plants and try to cycle without them?
I will say that my duckweed seems to double in numbers everyday....
Thanks for any advice. :biggrin:
In the tank I have guppy grass, hornwort, duckweed, loads of water lettuce and a floating plant with round leaves (not sure what it is) I got from a established tank. Its pretty packed since I read shrimp love plants.
I am using pure ammonia and dosed the tank to around 3ppm.
However, it appears the plants are just sucking up the ammonia. Within a day, my ammonia read 1ppm and than within other it became 0.25ppm. However, I have no nitrite or nitrate output. So I re-dosed it to 5ppm yesterday and today its 3ppm, but again, no nitrite or nitrate at all...
I'm not sure if the tank is partially cycled and the bacteria is actually converting to nitrate and the plants just been adsorbing it completely or if the plants are actually absorbing the ammonia and the tank is not cycled.
Some help with this? Should I keep adding ammonia and hope for some signs of nitrite/nitrate? Should I remove the plants and try to cycle without them?
I will say that my duckweed seems to double in numbers everyday....
Thanks for any advice. :biggrin: