My Fishless Cycle

[waterdrop]

Your water hasn't bounced around like that. Its the tests. One of the reagents in the nitrate test can precipitate out and clump up in the test bottle. The reagent then sometimes gets unevenly distributed in the drops you put in or the little nozzle gets blocked and the amount and type of shaking ends up making a difference too. Both of these are contributors to the widely shared info here on the forum that nitrate tests are just plain "flakey" sometimes, so you have to believe your "trend" in your logbook much more than any single given test episode as it could just be a spurious outlier.

My father-in-law is a chemist who used this stuff for years and he said these particular tests are notorious for being difficult to do, even in a lab, much less with a cheap room temp liquid kit like we use. So there's just no getting around it. You can't take the nitrate test too seriously any given time and especially when there's nitrite about in the test water too as that messes it up some in a different way!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tommyg123]

Alright then i understand what your saying.

So just carry on as nomal and keep adding ammonia untill my nitrate and nitrite drops?

 

[waterdrop]

Yup!

 

[tommyg123]

Day 19 (12hours)

Ph= 8.0
Am= 0
NO2= 1.6
NO3= 110

 

[tommyg123]

forgot to do 2nd (24hour) test before adding the ammonia.

Day 20 (12hours):
PH= 8.0
Am= 0
NO2= 1.6
NO3= 110

When will i start to see a drop in my NO2 and NO3?

thanks

 

[waterdrop]

I keep thinking when I get back to your case that its odd to keep seeing NO2=1.6 over and over but then I went back through the thread and I'm wondering if the 1.6 and the 3.3 just all looked the same to you and you started just calling it 1.6? I seem to remember that 3.3 may be "as high as you can go" on the Nutrafin Nitrite(NO2) results, so perhaps what we're seeing is that you are still just really at the stage of your "nitrite spike" (which would make sense for only about 20 days in to your fishless cycle.) We'd expect to see nitrite(NO2) finally start getting processed down to zero in 24 hours sometime in the next 10 days or so I'd think, but of course the whole point of this forum is that its really quite unpredictable and so people need to be encouraged that yes, its still going to happen at some point!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tommyg123]

Yes, waterdrop on the NO2 test i do think those colours are the same, so i ended up calling it 1.6 when it might aswell be 3.3 haha.

And thanks again for your help

 

[waterdrop]

OK, that settles it, I'm going to just think you are still in your "nitrite spike" stage and that's why we keep seeing the 1.6 all the time!

 

[tommyg123]

Ok,
Day 20 (24hours)

Ph= 8.0
Am= 0
NO2= 3.3
NO3= 110

I'll stick to calling the NO2 3.3 now lol.

 

[tommyg123]

Tonights results..

Day 21 (24hours)
Am= 0
NO2= 3.3
NO3= 110

I can see the colours are getting abit lighter coloured now but are still pretty much on the same readings i think.

 

[tommyg123]

Day 22 (12hours)

Ph= 7.5
Am= 0
NO2= 3.3
NO3= 110

 

[tommyg123]

Forgot to add Ammonia last night when i went to bed so added it this morning about 12 hours after it was meant to be added.
Is this going to affect the cycling?

Will be doing the 12 hour test in about an hour or so and will post those results

thanks

 

[OldMan47]

A single miss like that won't affect anything, just get back on your dosing schedule after you get your readings.

 

[tommyg123]

Ok thanks mate

Results are the same really..

Am= 0
NO2= 3.3
NO3= 110

(pretty sure my NO3 has dropped but not 100% again)

 

[tommyg123]

Day 23 (24 hours)

Am= 0
NO2= 0.1
NO3= 50-110

Cant really tell with the NO3 but it has dropped below 110

(add 3ml ammonia)