Help - tank levels not as expected in fishless tank

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You don't have to move the plants to drain the tank. Leave the gravel and plants where they are and just syphon the water out and refill it. Or just let it run for a few days and see if the ammonia stops by itself.
 
Do you know if your water is treated with chlorine or chloramine? If it is chloramine and your dechlorinator does not specifically say it treats chloramine on the lable it will get rid of the chlorine and leave the ammonia in the water.
 
Thanks. :)

We are going to leave it as it is and see what happens. The Nitrate colour may be a little darker than before (always hard to tell as natural light level drops and using articifical) and husband has just pruned some dodgy looking leaves off one of the plants.

Going to try our luck and see if a cycle has kicked in that we might be able to piggy back off.

Seangee - dont know, will have to check.
 
Silly question. In your photo you appear to have gravel on the bottom of the tank. Is it just gravel or is there a plant substrate under the gravel? I ask because some of those are known to release ammonia.

If your dechlorinator says it contains something to detoxify ammonia that will take care of the ammonia released from chloramine, but it will still show as ammonia in the test.
 
No plant substrate just gravel.

Thanks for the notes on the dechlorinator.
 
Someone asked about chloramine...does your water authority use chloramine or just chlorine, or both?

A couple of other things occur to me. First, nothing was added to establish the bacteria, so the tank has been on its own. This might explain the varying ammonia and nitrite test results. I would consider getting a bacterial supplement to help "seed" the bacteria. Normally I don't suggest this, or use it myself, with live plants, but it cannot hurt as it is just bacteria. Tetra's SafeStart is the one I would recommend if you can get it locally, or if not then Seachem's Stability. I have used the latter once or twice in specific circumstances and found it works very well. The smallest bottle you can get, as it is just a one-time thing; follow the directions on the label for dosage. Use it after the next water change and don't do another change for at least several days.

Second observation is that chemical substances do sometimes interact and result in odd readings for ammonia/nitrite. What water conditioner? Any others (aside from the plant fertilizer--which of course may explain ammonia/nitrite as well).
 
We have just put in some Pure Aquarium balls - these were recommended by one of the shops to fix the issue when we went in last Sunday.

The water conditioner has been Tetra Aqua safe. The water change yesterday was done with Fluval Aqua Plus as we had run out of the Tetra stuff. The Fluval stuff was recommended by the same shop as the PA balls.

As for the cholramine, it isnt listed in their water quality report. A bit of googling has trudged up someone having an argument with them back in 2009 about them needing to declare certain chemicals or not and chloramine was mentioned. It's unclear if they do use it today though.
 
We have the same water supply company as all 4 of the shops we've visited and none have mentioned it being an issue.
 
We have the same water supply company as all 4 of the shops we've visited and none have mentioned it being an issue.

They likely wouldn't. Unless there is a major issue with the water supply.

Chloramine seems to be added then, so that may be the ammonia. And at 0.25 it is very minimal. I would not even worry about it. Once the tank is established with fish and plants it should not be an issue. As long as your conditioner detoxifies chloramine that should not be a problem. The ammonia in chloramine is detoxified by being changed into harmless (relatively) ammonium. Our test kits read ammonia or ammonium as "ammonia." So the detoxified ammonia, now ammonium, is safe but still shows as "ammonia." This detoxification may be temporary (24-48 hours), but the bacteria and plants will be taking it up during that time in either form, so it should be OK. Test later in the week (with no water changes) and see if this is still showing up.

Nitrite is different, and I cannot explain that. I have only ever had nitrite in an aquarium, and that was after I used a particularly potent medication that may either have killed the filter bacteria or had some other chemical interaction, or both. With plants taking up so much ammonia, little gets through the bacteria to cause nitrite and then nitrate.

I know nothing about the Aqua Pure Aquarium Balls, but here is an article from PFK that provides some insight:
https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/articles/evolution-aqua-pure-aquarium-review
 
Just popped back to the shop where we got most of our set up.

He's going to run his own test on the rock so we'll speak to him in the week on that.

As for the tank. Job 1 is to double check some tap water with some plant food just to rule out any false Nitrogen based readings.

Then if that comes back negative we will be going for a fishless cycle using the decayed fish food method. Might as well try working with what we've got.

Thanks for all the help and information. Hopefully we can get the cycle going and all will be well!
 
Just popped back to the shop where we got most of our set up.

He's going to run his own test on the rock so we'll speak to him in the week on that.

As for the tank. Job 1 is to double check some tap water with some plant food just to rule out any false Nitrogen based readings.

Then if that comes back negative we will be going for a fishless cycle using the decayed fish food method. Might as well try working with what we've got.

Thanks for all the help and information. Hopefully we can get the cycle going and all will be well!

Only suggestion here is to use a bacterial supplement rather than trying to cycle with decaying fish food. The bacterial supplements I mentioned in post #51 will introduce bacteria which should speed up the process. Decaying fish food is only going to add (maybe) ammonia, then nitrite second stage; but these are already present, so the bacterial supplement seems better.
 
Hello again.

Just wanted to post an update...

Our Ammonia and Nitrites are at 0!

Hopefully we have a cycled tank, although if turns out that isn't the case for some reason, at least it looks like things have settled down and the anomalies have gone.

Thanks for all your help. We are hoping to get some fish in this weekend. :)
 

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