Another Post About Cycling With Plants

[mancin]

So I've read. And read some more. And read some more. My head is spinning a bit. I am currently cyling a 60G tank, but am very early in the process (Day 4). I am not planning on heavily planting to allow for adequate swimming room for the fish I'm planning on keeping, but I do want to have a fair amount of plants. I have very low light (less than 1 WPG) and am not interested in upgrading the lighting as I know low light planted tanks are possible as long as I stick to my limited low light plant options. I do not want to do injected CO2, but I am open to the idea of dosing Seachem Flourish Excel as long as the cost to do so doesn't get outrageous.
 
It's been several years since I've cycled a tank and I had already ordered a few plants and planted them before I started the cycle. I was able to get some media from a friend with a heavily stocked tank (however their tank is only 20G) and put it in my filter (running an Emperor 400). I dosed up to 3 PPM ammonia on Day 1 and have not seen any changes (nor would I really expect to at this point I guess).
 
As we speak, I have the following in the tank:
 
- 2x drift wood
- 1x java fern
- 2x anubias nana
- 2x anubias congensis
- 2x anubias heterphylla
 
I want to get more plants, but now I'm torn if I should go for it now or wait. I would like to get:
 
- 2x hygrophila corymbosa
- 2x cryptocoryne undulata
- 2x cryptocoryne wendtii
- 2x cryptocoryne spiralis
 
My planned fish stock when the tank is ready will be:
 
4 (juvenile) Angelfish
1 BN pleco
2 x GBR
8 - 10 larger tetra (looking currently at Head and Tail Light tetras)
5 zebra or dwarf chain loaches
 
Any advice on how to proceed?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

When was day 1?
 
There is a line out there in terms if cycling with plants that is hard to pinpoint. beyond it ammonia is not really needed and cycling cn be bypassed. But plants will normally do two things in a tank, they eat ammonium and the come in with some bacteria on them. From the they eat ammonium standpoint, what they take in means there is that much less for bacteria to have to handle.
 
However, not all plants take in nutrients at the same rate. The ones which take them in the fastest tend to minimize the need for cycling the most. Unfortunately these tend to be fast growing plants, especially most stem plants. You gave not planted any of these but instead have chose the slower growing ones.
 
The fact that you have no drop in ammonia indicates two things your plants are slow growers and there is almost no bacteria in the the tank. The amount on the plants and donated to you is simply too little to show an effect quickly. Decent planting or decent seeding should show an effect withing 24 hours of ammonia going in. When together they should certainly do so. This does not mean there is 0 benefit in your tank, it is more than none but you have not detected it yet. It should still shorten the cycle.
 
The biggest risk in cycling with plants is the potential for algae. In lightly planted tanks is about equal to the algae danger in tanks without plants being cycled fishlessly, imo. Since the bacteria are photosensitive and since the anubias are sturdy, if you see algae, turn of the tank lights and leave them off until ammonia levels drop a bunch.
 
If your seeding has helped you will know because your nitrite levels should not rise as much as in a cycle with no help from seeded bacteria.  One last note re all this. Is it possible that you dosed more ppm of ammonia initially than your realize and it has actually dropped a bit?

 

[mancin]

When was day 1?

 
I dosed first batch of ammonia on 2/13 in the evening, so actually I guess it would be 3 full days (counting 24 hours) this evening, not 4.
 

However, not all plants take in nutrients at the same rate. The ones which take them in the fastest tend to minimize the need for cycling the most. Unfortunately these tend to be fast growing plants, especially most stem plants. You gave not planted any of these but instead have chose the slower growing ones.

 
I would be happy to add stem plants, but I'm just not sure of which ones would be appropriate in my set up. I've found conflicting success in a very low light set up with water sprite. I was already interested in adding hygrophila corymbosa, but not sure how fast that one grows as I've never kept it. I would be willing to give hygrophila polysperma a try too if I could find a supplier for it.
 

Is it possible that you dosed more ppm of ammonia initially than your realize and it has actually dropped a bit?

 
It's possible, yes. In fact, your comment made me go back to the calculator as I know I added 9 ml of ammonia. For my tank, that would be roughly 4ppm, not 3ppm.  Looks like I should have added ~6.5 ml. I had measured the levels in the tank about 30 minutes after adding the ammonia to give it a chance to circulate and thought it was only about 3ppm, but I admit I'm not the best at telling the difference between the green shades on the API tests unless it's quite obvious.

 

[l_l_l]

To respond to one of your questions: I have hygrophila in a low light tank and it's growing just fine! Just make sure you get the HYGROPHILA POLYSPERMA

 

[mancin]

Just make sure you get the HYGROPHILA POLYSPERMA

 
Well, looks like it's on the noxious weeds list so illegal in the US. That explains why I can't find it.
 
Guess I'll pick up some more plants and go from there. I'm going to pick up some dwarf sag, hygrophila corymbosa, vallisneria spiralis, and cryptocoryne wendtii. I know the crypt is slow growing, but the others seem to have decent growth rates and should hopefully do OK for me. If anyone has suggestions at how many of each I should get I'd love to hear it, otherwise I tend to stick to 2x (except the spiralis is being sold as 10 plants).

 

[mancin]

Yahoo! I have a Nitrite reading. Ammonia seems to be between 1 and 2 PPM and Nitrite is about 0.25 PPM.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Bear in mind that in your tank the numbers will be different due to plants. Two reasons, the plants themselves take up some amount of ammonium but they also have bacteria on them. To the extent that some ammonia goes to the plants rather than the bacteria, there will be less nitrite. the plants use the ammonia but do not make nitrite. So your nitrite numbers will be lower as well. The more plants one has and the faster they uptake nutrients (mostly ammonium and nitrate in terms of nitrogen), the less nitrite you will see and if you are a nitrate tester, there will be less of that as well.

 

[mancin]

Bear in mind that in your tank the numbers will be different due to plants. Two reasons, the plants themselves take up some amount of ammonium but they also have bacteria on them. To the extent that some ammonia goes to the plants rather than the bacteria, there will be less nitrite. the plants use the ammonia but do not make nitrite. So your nitrite numbers will be lower as well. The more plants one has and the faster they uptake nutrients (mostly ammonium and nitrate in terms of nitrogen), the less nitrite you will see and if you are a nitrate tester, there will be less of that as well.

 
Makes sense! Thank you!

 

[mancin]

Update:
 
Last night (Day 8) my ammonia reading was 0.5 PPM and nitrite was ~2 PPM.
 
This morning ammonia was down to 0.25 PPM and nitrite was for sure over 2 PPM, so I re-dosed 5 ml of ammonia which put me back between 2 PPM and 3 PPM. Will check numbers again in the morning!

 

[mancin]

Stats this morning:
 
Ammonia is back down to 0.25 (so it seems to have processed the 5 ml I added yesterday morning as it read 0.25 at that time)
Nitrite is still sky high
Nitrate is 5
 
Reading the cycling instructions, I should give a maintenance feeding (so in my case ~1 3/4 ml of ammonia) once I have gotten 2 ammonia readings of 0. If I understand the process correctly, this is to allow time for the nitrite to convert but also keep the ammonia converting bacteria alive. I don't know if this is still the case since I have a few plants, although given the numbers this cycle I don't think they are contributing much.
 
The process has changed since I fishless cycled nearly 5 years ago. At that time I added up to 5 PPM every time ammonia read 0, and experienced 2 pH crashes (maybe they were related?). Just want to be sure I'm doing this correctly now that instructions are revised.
 
Should I do the maintenance feeding tomorrow AM?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

.25 is not 0. Do the maint. dose when you get 0 for ammonia two tests in a row. The reason for having folks wait is it means the nitrite will have come down some. The cycling method here is designed to prevent too much nitrite from building up and stalling the cycle. Raising the amount of the ammonia dosing and/or the frequency can create too much nitrite.
 
Fishless cycling has changed. There was never any reason to be adding that much ammonia- it took them a number of years to figure out. the one they they got right for sure was as much seeding of bacteria any way possible was a really good idea.

 

[mancin]

Ok.

 

[mancin]

Added maintenance dose this morning (got 0 ammonia yesterday AM and this morning). I did some diluted nitrite testing tonight for fun (using tank water and distilled water) and it looks like it's ~8 PPM.
 
I seem to have some kind of snails in the tank from the plants. There are eggs on some of the leaves and doing a quick search online, they seem to be pond snails? At first I thought they might be MTS but those are livebearers. Not really sure if I need to worry about this or not. I know there's a risk with snails with live plants and I was planning on stocking some botia loaches once the tank is ready.

 

[mancin]

So I'm a bit confused. I added maintenance dose of 1.75 ml on 2/24. The next morning I had an ammonia reading of 0.25 and this morning I still have an ammonia reading of 0.25. This doesn't make sense to me since it was able to process the 5 ml ammonia addition on 2/21 in just a little over 24 hours.
 
Stats:
 
Ammonia: 0.25 PPM
Nitrite: 5 PPM
Nitrate: Between 0 and 5 PPM
pH: 7.6
 
Plants seem to be doing fine. I don't see any rotting areas. I would assume they are also taking in some of the nitrate too since my nitrate reading has fallen some. Could the ammonia reading be from the hitchhiker snails? Just don't know where this ammonia is coming from.
 
Any ideas? I hate this part of the cycle.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

What dechlor are you using. many of these now have ammonia detoxifiers as a part of what they do. This causes false lower level positive readings for ammonia. One clue that you are having this issue is that the level of .25 or .5 stays constant despite the fact that you know you have a decent colony of ammonia processing bacteria. These guys may be slow reproducers, but they can still double their numbers in 10 hours or so. they reproduce in response to excess ammonia, that is more than they need for maintenance and maximum processing capacity.
 
So if a tank is handling about 3 ppm in 24 hours, and that amount becomes 3.25 ppm, the colony should catch up fast and the ammonia should be at 0 in a matter of hours. Instead it seems to persist. Here is a quote from the SeaChem site regarding Prime:
 

 
Q: I am using Prime® to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?

A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime®... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime®). A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime®), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away.

from http/www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html