40 Days, Cycle Won't Start, Help!

[TwoTankAmin]

snazy, daize posted some photos of the results in this thread http://www.fishforums.net/index.php...g-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#entry3495088

daize- how much time elapsed between your dosing the 16 drops and the API test showing "a bit lighter than '50"?

 

[snazy]

snazy, daize posted some photos of the results in this thread http/www.fishforum...y/#entry3495088

 
OK, Thanks. I forgot about that.
By the way Daize, that colour on the API ammonia test you posted in the above thread is what I always considered around 2ppm, not 1ppm but it could be the picture throwing me off. But if the colour is correct, the Api test is giving you exactly what it should be which is 2ppm as per the colour.
 
Here is a picture of my tests(pic Number 1) from over a year ago when I kept a record just for you to compare. The ammonia is 1ppm there. I took the liberty to copy your picture from the thread for comparison with mine. It's pic Number 2 further down.
 
Number 1(my tests)

 
 
Picture Number 2(your tests)
 

 

[daizeUK]

Right.  My kitchen has been turned into a chemistry lab for most of the day, here are the results.
 
Day 14, Saturday 2 March 12:45pm
Ammonia zero, nitrite zero, nitrate 40 ppm (still looks the same as the 40ppm I get with my tap water)
That's lovely clear zeroes on ammonia and nitrite, I think that the tank hadn't quite finished processing ammonia when I measured yesterday and it's finished off the job overnight.
 
TTA - I added 16 drops of NH4Cl at 2pm on Thursday and ammonia was still present 22.5 hours later at 12:30pm Friday.
 
I have added another 16 drops ammonium chloride at 1pm today, so I will give it 24 hours and test again tomorrow.
 
Snazy - you're right about the colours, I think the lighting is affecting my results.  I've been taking readings in front of a window so that the test tube is brightly lit with no shadows, I'm now thinking that perhaps this makes the colours too bright and maybe causes me to underestimate the readings.  Certainly the photos always seem to come out a bit darker than what I can see.  Today I've tried to take readings with the tube facing away from the window and the light shining through the card behind instead and the colours seemed to match better.
 
I've taken ideas from both of you about running tests on my Salifert kits, I will post the full results in the other thread but the short version is that I still can't read low values of ammonia, even using deionised water.  However I did get slightly better results when using a different ammonia source, so I wonder if part of the problem is just that test kits can't read Dr Tim's ammonium chloride for some reason.

 

[snazy]

I did a whole fishless cycling dosing to 1ppm ammonia and I know the colour fairly well, it was certainly almost the same each time.
Anything up to 1ppm ammonia on the API test has a tinge of yellow although the intensity of green increases of course, making it greener at the same time and less yellowish.
Anything that looks quite green, as in your tube test above, is more than 1ppm for sure in my opinion. This is my interpretation of testing with API ammonia test but I've done quite a lot of it out of curiousity. And as I mentioned before, the API test for the most part was close enough to what I was aiming at by dosing bottled ammonia so it never made me doubt. I now have a nutrafin test and I am struggling with the results. I am also cycling a tank at the moment.
 
Just on a side note, but the colour in the test tube will always be transparent unless you are dealing with some 8ppm of ammonia, so the colour will never be the solid tick one you see on the chart, it is the shade of colour you need to compare.
 If the ammonia is off the charts, as above 8ppm, the API ammonia test may even turn totally clear instead of showing a colour.

 

[snazy]

This is 0.50ppm below. See how more yellowish it becomes compared to 1ppm. If I didn't have pictures to compare you can almost confuse the two:
 
0.50ppm ammonia:

 
1ppm ammonia:

 
Your ammonia:

 

[daizeUK]

Day 15.  2:15pm, 25 hours after adding ammonia.  NH3 0.25ppm, NO2 almost zero.
 
It's almost there but still not quite processing that ammonia in 24 hours.  It's cool, I have loads of patience now that I'm satisfied it's geting better so I will keep checking it daily until the ammonia is sunshine yellow in 24 hours.
 
I got myself a second-hand 28 litre AquaStart 320 for £25, planning to use it as a quarantine and hospital tank.  Haven't had a chance to clean it yet, I'm feeling unwell today and had to drag myself out of bed to do the water tests.  When I get the chance I'm going to set it up and start a new cycle LOL am I crazy, I think it will be interesting to see how fast I can get it to cycle given everything I've learned.
 
I had an idea it might make a nice betta tank but the husband nearly choked on his coffee when he found out I'd bought another tank before we've got fish in the first one, he made me promise it will be kept for emergency use only!

 

[snazy]

Don't worry, negotiationg has just started   The multiple tank syndrome is fairly dangerous

Keep in mind that the API ammonia test never really shows very bright yellow when 0, not on my tests with totally cycled and old tanks. The 0.25 and 0 are almost undistinguishable in reality besides the green tinge on the surface of the water in the test tube when there's ammonia.
There's no logic to have 0.25ppm ammonia and 0 nitrItes because in all cycles I've done the ammonia is the first to drop to 0 fairly rapidly, when the nitrites are hanging around still. If you have 0.25ppm ammonia and 0 nitrItes, it means the nitrIte eating bacteria has multiplied faster and converts faster than the ammonia which is fairly strange and unusual but in your case I wouldn't be surprised

   

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Not unusual- almost impossible for that to happen. First off, there has to be an ammonia source for there to be a constant low level reading. So if one is not adding ammonia in any fashion and nothing in the tank is making ammonia there is only one possible explanation- the test results are wrong. Now this means either the ammonia or the nitrite results are wrong. Which would you want to bet would be the guilty test?
 
And while we know that the amount of nitrogen remains constant from start to end of the cycle, the other components change such that as one moves from ammonia to nitrate the ppms increase. So the other thing we know is if .25 ppm of ammonia shows up in a tank, it should turn into about .63 ppm of nitrite. The other thing we know is if one puts ammonia into a tank with 0 bacteria working and then no bacteria get in to begin working, the ammonia won't drop and the nitrite wont show up. Since daize got/gets nitrite readings only three things are possible. 1. Nitrite came in with the water (very very very unlikely). 2. There is no nitrite, the test kit is in error. 3. There are AOB converting ammonia to nitrite. And this argument would also apply relative to nitrate and NOB.
 
So one must either believe that both of the API kits must be in error or else that the tank is actually cycling. If the ammonia test is correct, then can the nitrite test also be correct? Not in light of the results. How can nitrite rise without AOB at work? Can the ammonia kit be right but the nitrite kit be wrong? Under the circumstances that is not possible either. The rise and fall in nitrite is exactly what should happen if NOB are present and multiplying.  So that leaves us with the ammonia test is being in error but the nitrite one being most likely to be more accurate. Which in turn would indicate that the tank is very close to being fully cycled.
 
Daize, you are going to hate me for this. but I would suggest if you want to make your life easier relative to the new Q tank, I would put the filter(S) for it into the current tank and ramp up the ammonia dosing and try to get them cycled from here rather than going again from scratch. Just bump up the ammonia dosing and maybe put a bit of the old media into the new filter(s).

 

[snazy]

Until someone can prove to me what these 'bottled' bacteria live on whilst within the bottles during transit (which could, surely, be upto weeks and weeks at a time) then i will always remain sceptical about them. Do they work? I'm not sure. Do they cause any damage? No. The only type of bacteria you can physically put into a filter to reduce any cycle time is healthy, mature bacteria from another filter. In my humble opinion only, of course. Meh.
 
Terry.

 
Hi Terry,
 
Here is an interesting article on the subject:
 
http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/mobile/content.php?sid=4780

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Not a bad article- the only part i think they got wrong is the motility part. One can find electron microscopy images of the bacteria online. I have never seen pictures of the nitrifiers with flagella. Some bacteria will move through the bio-film with little spike like appendages and some bacteria doesn't move much at all. I believe this is more the case for the autotrophic nitrifiers than it is they are highly mobile using flagella. The best I can understand is that the bacteria in a bio-film may become irreversibly attached. I did find at least one interesting paper on the subject "Adhesion: Seen Any Good Biofilms Lately?" at http/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC118072/
I will look for more.

 

 

[snazy]

Well it's hard to put the two ends together with this bacteria. The latest being that the microorganisms repsonsible for ammonia to nitrIte conversion lately discovered in large numbers are archaeabacteria but both provide evidence of being able to survive completely different conditions.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

No this is not such a hot topic as it was in early 2006 with the discovery of an ammonia oxidizing archaea in the gravel of one of a public aquariums tanks. To date there have been no nitrite oxidizing archaea discovered.
 
Moreover, the main study identifying them as being present in aquariums was turned down by the more respected peer reviewed journals and it appeared in PLOS One which many believe is a repository for research that cant' get accepted anywhere else. However, some also swear by PLOS, I am not one of them.
 
Secondly, I have spend a good deal of time researching the potential role of Archaea and I am far from convinced they play any role in home aquariums, especially fw ones. If you would like links to some of the archaea studies I have checked out let me know. If you want to do the research yourself try entering "AOB vs AOA" into Google Scholar. The jury is still way out on this issue from what I have read.
 
If doing the research areas to investigate are the AOA use of copper in oxidizing ammonia whereas AOB use iron. Also look for proof the gene counts for amo correlate positively with the amount of ammonia oxidation performed. That is the biggest hole in all the research, imo.

 

[snazy]

I read briefly only. I used to be very interested but it's so controversial that I'll wait until someone bothers to prove something in more reliable way. Yes, the AOA info is mainly marine but I read recently(couldn't find it but I'll try again) about a test that involved many home FW aquaria from all types, small/big ones, different temp, etc... and the ammonia oxydizing organizm found was predominantly AOA.

 

[daizeUK]

Fish tanks have taken a back seat this week due to illness.  I've been trying to take readings when I can though
 
I'm a bit confused with where the cycle's at then.
 
1. March 3 at 2:15pm, 25 hours after adding ammonia.  NH3 is 0.25ppm or slightly more, NO2 almost zero.
2. March 5 at 2:20pm, 73 hours after adding ammonia, NH3 is zero, NO2 is zero.
3. March 6 at 2:20pm, 24 hours after adding ammonia, NH3 is 0.25ppm or slightly less, NO2 is zero.
 

 
See how the ammonia went a nice sunshine yellow in picture 2?  That's why I don't think there can be anything wrong with the API test.  The difference is obvious when there's no ammonia at all.
 
Picture 3 is today's test and it looks closer to 0.25ppm than zero to me.  But nitrites have been pretty much zero throughout.  Is it really so strange that there might be a healthier population of N-bacs than A-bacs?  Cos I agree with Snazy, that's what it looks like to me.
 
Ironically I'm in no rush as I'm still too unwell to go rushing out buying fish anyway
 
Oh and I finally figured out where TwoTankAmin gets his name from, always had me wondering and I finally got it, lol yup I'm slow!
I've decided my first three guppies will be called Snazy, Eagle and King Tut 

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I am honored.