Fishless Cycling Problems And Reading Test Kit Problems =(

[lgarvey]

Yeh, that's sound advice. I'll keep feeding the tank for a period of time after the am & ni are down to 0.


I tested this morning after putting 5ml of ammonia in last night (according to an online calculator 5ml is enough to raise the 125 litre tank to 5ppm of ammonia). The ammonia is flored at 0, the nitrites are at about 0.25 and ..... weird, werid weird. The nitrates are registering about 7ppm, yet they were registering about 40ppm (bright red) a few days ago. I tested twice with a new batch of tank water because the nitrate readings made no sense.

The tank is stocked out with plants -- 11 large plants in the tank. Could they be responsible for this?

I have just noticed about 5 small snails in there as well. Not really the inhabitants I want. =

Thanks for the support! It's appreciated. I'm going to post a new thread about what fish I should get when the tank is fully set-up.

L

 

[lgarvey]

Wooo! The tank has cycled fully now. But I'll give it a few days 'till I add fish. The thing that's perplexing me is there are no nitrAtes! I have tested it twice and asked a friend to test it, but it comes out 0 each time. So currently Ammonia: 0, NitrItes: 0, NitrAtes: 0

How can this be?!?

The plants MUST be choffing great ammounts of nitrAte. A few days ago the test came out bright red (40+ ppm nitrAte) now it's 0ppm. I'm not complaining, but I'd like to understand what has gone on.

Final question, if the water parameters match for the fish that I want and there is little to no nitrAte, and no ammonia and nitrite, will I still need to do a large water change prior to adding fish?

L

 

[minxfishy]

Great news to hear its finally cycled - could be that your plants are consuming the nitrAte -is the tank heavily planted?

Give it a few more days as you say and I would do a large water changing prior to adding the fish even though you have zero for all tests - its always nice to have good clean water before adding fish

 

[Madhousedavy]

Can someone please tell me the ideal water quality please gh,kh,mitrite,nitrate and ammonia because i cannot find this anywhereon this site, sorry if this is in the wrong post but i wouldnt know where to post it otherwise.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there madhousedavy and welcome to TFF.

Unfortunately, for the sake of the beginner(!), there is no ideal set of water stats. That's partly because there are hundreds of different species of fish and lots of different live plants that people choose to try to keep in their freshwater tropical aquariums. Its also because the whole hobby is about processes, not ideals. Each of us lives in a particular water district and our tap water may be different from that of another member. One fairly ideal situation is when your tap water has zero ammonia, zero nitrites(NO2), zero nitrates(NO3), a decent KH of maybe 3 or above and a pH that is in a decent range for all the fish you hope to keep. Under that ideal situation you wouldn't have to reject a favorite fish because your pH was just too different for it and your weekly water changes would have maximal positive impact on the maintenance of your tank.

Beginners often place way too much emphasis on the pH. They often think they need to match the pH to the fish they want. The vast majority of the time that isn't true. Its important that the alkalinity (the thing we measure in KH units) be fairly stable and that will usually mean the pH is stable and if that's the case, the fish usually won't care what particular KH or pH the water is.

In contrast, beginners often do not place enough emphasis on ensuring that ammonia and nitrite are both as close to zero as possible, that they ideally never rise above 0.25ppm at any time during the fishes life if possible. Nitrate(NO3), on the other hand is relatively unimportant compared to these first two toxins. Nitrate is not particularly a good thing in a tank but water changes should keep it down to only 10 or 20 ppms above whatever it is in the tap water.

Anyway, hope this helps a little and don't be hesitant to hit the "New Topic" button and start your own thread for further questions. Asking on the end of some other thread probably just gets a lot of members confused at first.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Madhousedavy]

Hi there madhousedavy and welcome to TFF.

Unfortunately, for the sake of the beginner(!), there is no ideal set of water stats. That's partly because there are hundreds of different species of fish and lots of different live plants that people choose to try to keep in their freshwater tropical aquariums. Its also because the whole hobby is about processes, not ideals. Each of us lives in a particular water district and our tap water may be different from that of another member. One fairly ideal situation is when your tap water has zero ammonia, zero nitrites(NO2), zero nitrates(NO3), a decent KH of maybe 3 or above and a pH that is in a decent range for all the fish you hope to keep. Under that ideal situation you wouldn't have to reject a favorite fish because your pH was just too different for it and your weekly water changes would have maximal positive impact on the maintenance of your tank.

Beginners often place way too much emphasis on the pH. They often think they need to match the pH to the fish they want. The vast majority of the time that isn't true. Its important that the alkalinity (the thing we measure in KH units) be fairly stable and that will usually mean the pH is stable and if that's the case, the fish usually won't care what particular KH or pH the water is.

In contrast, beginners often do not place enough emphasis on ensuring that ammonia and nitrite are both as close to zero as possible, that they ideally never rise above 0.25ppm at any time during the fishes life if possible. Nitrate(NO3), on the other hand is relatively unimportant compared to these first two toxins. Nitrate is not particularly a good thing in a tank but water changes should keep it down to only 10 or 20 ppms above whatever it is in the tap water.

Anyway, hope this helps a little and don't be hesitant to hit the "New Topic" button and start your own thread for further questions. Asking on the end of some other thread probably just gets a lot of members confused at first.

~~waterdrop~~

thank you very much for the help
Still figuring out how this forum works but im getting there