Stubedoo's 300litre Tank Log - My First Ever Tank

[Schmill]

Thanks Miss Wiggle, I was wondering if the pH drop might be a good sign, glad to hear it isn't all bad.

Waterdrop, I intend to do a water change down to the filter inlet pipe, based on your previous advice. That will be about a 70/75% water change.

Sounds good Stu, that's what I do when I do the change, although I must admit I power off the filter and shutoff the taps before refilling.
Obviously keeping the water above the mesh of the inlet pipe means you don't lose the syphon, and therefore can switch the filter straight back on again, and I close off the filter so that I can make sure the water is dechlor'ed and ideally back at 'tank temperature' before I start pumping it through the filter again (although to do this you'll obviously need to add some hot water when refilling).
I've refilled the tank with cold water only a couple of times, and then just opened up the filter once the tank was full again, and each time it knocked me back a good 2 or 3 days in the filter cycle, which I can only put down to the cold water (around 15 deg C), being passed through the filter until the tank heater got it back to temperature, (usually 12-18hrs). When I do my next change the kettle is going to be put to good use

Have your various heater troubles sorted themselves out now by the way?

 

[waterdrop]

It does seem to be generally agreed upon, at least by my observations here in the "New to the Hobby" discussions, that a water change during fishless cycling will usually cause a "pause" and set your progress back a day or two. That doesn't mean its not a good thing to do of course, as its usually done for good reason and if the reasons were right then it usually helps get the process back on track and proceeding to the goal of a cycled filter.

I don't think its at all understood why the water change would interrupt the development process. It seems not like that at all once the colonies are robust and the filter very mature. After that, the colonies seem to take quite large "insults" with hardly a blip in performance. Some of us have had some attempted scientific discussions where this topic has come up and my own readings of Hovanec's papers and of a modern bacteriology text have only made me more and more humble about how much there is to know about these organisms and their biofilms!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[stubedoo]

Have your various heater troubles sorted themselves out now by the way?

Well not exactly, but I don't think they ever will. When we have a very cold snap, the temperature struggles to keep stable, but if we have milder days and especially nights the temperature remains stable. I think it will just be a matter of running two heaters during the winter months.

Okay did a large water change last night, probably around 70% (right down to the top on the inlet pipe). Topped up with ammonia after water change too.

Day 30 (15th Jan) - 9:15am

Ammonia 3.0
NitrItes >1.0
NitrAtes 12
pH 6.6

Bit disappointed after shipping about 20 buckets out and then back in that I only got a .4 rise in pH, just goes to show my tap water isn't very acidic. Rest of the results seem as expected. I just hope the pH doesn't drop back again, I think I will be buying some pH Up if it does, as I don't fancy another big water change quite just yet.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Don't use pH up, if the water changes don't work then yes you may need to buffer it but pH up is not the way to do it.

Adjusting pH can be very tricky and it's easy to get it wrong so doing anything to it should be a careful decision after a bit of discussion of your personal circumstances. dumping pH up in is probaly the worst thing you can do.

there's a link in my sig about pH and KH, have a read of that initially to get some idea of how it all sits together, keep monitoring pH over the next few days, if it goes on the slide again then we may need to buffer it.

 

[Schmill]

Was going to say, (and thankfully it's not something that affects me), most things I've read on here would recommend not to fix it using chemicals.

I think using some kind of coral in your substrate can help,but you'll need to read and search to see if thats the case. A good start would be Miss W's link, as you have the ph itself, (which you may want to adjust), but also the KH which will affect how easy it is to 'move' your ph, and also how stable it will be once it's there.

As always, good luck matey!

 

[stubedoo]

Day 31 (16th Jan) - 9:45am

Ammonia 1.5
NitrItes 1.0
NitrAtes not tested
pH 6.3

Not a happy bunny this morning. pH has dropped off already to 6.3, so it looks like I have a pH problem

I have had a quick read through the thread you pointed to Miss Wiggle, but to be honest a lot of it went right over my head, and I shall have to return to it when I have time, to try and get a fuller understanding.

Anoyone got any thoughts in the meantime? What information from me (and my water) would help to determine what is the best course of action?

 

[Schmill]

Sorry to hear your troubles Stu.

My advice would be;

- Remove the bog wood (it can be known to lower the ph, although usually has little effect unless something else is going on too).
You might want to store it in a bucket of water so that it doesn't dry out and make putting it back in later trickier

- Measure your water hardness KH, and PH both at the tap and in the tank.
I would measure the water striaght from the tank, but with the tap water let it stand for an hour or so first, (as I belive things that 'gas off' will affect the reading)
I use some API 5-in-1 test strips to measure my water hardness just because I've got them and I don't use tehm for any other tests - lol - but you can probably get a liquid test kit for hardness that I'm sure would be better.

If you have a low KH then it means your water is much more prone to ph swings, in that it takes less to 'push' the ph to a new level than it would for someone with a higher KH. Alternatively if you have a relatively high KH, and are still getting ph crashes then something must be pushing the ph fairly hard, so will need to be looked at.

At first guess it sounds like you might be a candidate for putting a bag of crushed coral into the tank / filter which will raise both the ph and the Kh, but those tests are going to be needed first before a course of action can be prescribed

Also the act of cycling can drive down the ph, but yours seems to travel very fast. It could be that you just need to add some bicarb soda whilst the tank is cycling, but again, tests will be needed first

Good luck

 

[Miss Wiggle]

have you got a KH test kit?

 

[stubedoo]

have you got a KH test kit?

nope... but I shall be buying one today!

Thanks for your commets Schmill

 

[stubedoo]

Okay, so I acquired an API KH and GH test kit yesterday afternoon.

As suspected it looks like I have very soft water, with a very low KH reading of 1dKH
(I did do one test this morning straight from the tap into a tube and it was 2dKH, but I've done quite a few from the tank and tap water left to settle all of which came out at the lowest 1dKH reading)

I believe GH is less important, but that took 3 drops to change colour, which according to my chart means 53.7ppm KH/GH (whatever that means).

So I have a very low KH, and a low GH, which all ties in with my problem in keeping the pH up in my fishless cycle.

So any advice for next steps would be much appreciated. I don't want perfect water, I just want to get through this cycle, so I can get a few fish in my tank, hopefully before Christmas!

 

[stubedoo]

Day 33 (18th Jan) - 11:30am

Ammonia 0.25
NitrItes 0.125
NitrAtes 12
pH 6.0 (or lower... test kit doesn't go any lower)

NB: added 12ml of ammonia solution to increase ammonia to approx 4ppm.

So looks like my cycle is dying on its backside. I couldn't face doing any more tests yesterday, and in the mean time my ammonia dropped quite low (now increased), and most worrying the nitrIte population has died back. With an off the chart 'low pH' to boot too.

I've just added 4 tsp of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) into the tank as an emergency measure to try and raise the pH. From what I've read it looks like crushed coral is the best long term solution, so I'm going to order some of that, but I wanted to try something in the meantime.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes right solution i think, see how you go with the bicarb over a few days.

 

[stubedoo]

Day 34 (19th Jan) - 09:30am

Ammonia 3.5
NitrItes 0.7
NitrAtes 25
pH 7.2 (was 7.4 the previous evening after baking soda added)
KH 3

Day 35 (20th Jan) - 10:10am

Ammonia 1.75
NitrItes 1
NitrAtes not tested
pH 6.8
KH not tested

NB: Coral sand added to help with pH & KH mid morning... hand full (in stocking) added to filter, and further hand full (in stocking) placed in the tank.

Day 36 (21st Jan) - 9:25am

Ammonia 0.5
NitrItes 1.5
NitrAtes 40
pH 6.8 (was 6.6 when I tested in yesterday afternoon... could be a sign that the coral sand is starting to work)
KH 2

NB: added 11ml of ammonia solution to increase ammonia to approx 4ppm.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

to help with the pH reduce to 3ppm of ammonia a day, you can creap it back up at the end easily.

 

[waterdrop]

Also, I think he's being too "wimpy" with the baking soda. This is a fishless cycle, right? There's no reason to be slow about KH/pH changes here, the bacteria won't care. Its fine to have the crushed coral in there slowly doing its thing and it will indeed be the method of choice after fish, but for now the bacterial soup needs some more spice in the form of more baking soda to get that KH up at 4 or above, something like that. I don't think there's much danger of overshooting the 8.0-8.4 pH that's optimal.

Now that there's the KH kit, you can try 5 teaspoons and see what that does. I'd still try to be reasonably gradual.

~~waterdrop~~