46 Gallon Tank In Cycling Stages

[waterdrop]

Its always important to realize that the "snapshots" of the process that you take with your tests are not going to just show a steady progression in one direction or the other. Instead, what's important is looking at the whole string of entries over days and days. When looking at that way its usually easy to see that as things come down, they also bounce around. They often do that and unless there's something unusual going on, its usually perfectly ok.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BryceHockey]

Thanks waterdrop. Right now though, I'm a little more worried. The ammonia was at .4 ppm after 12 hours, the nitrite at .4 ppm, and the pH was 7.4. I am unsure if I was inaccurate with reading the pH stats for the past few days, it may have been 7.4 instead of 7.9 but hard to say. I added some baking soda. A water change is definitely being considered for today.

If it was just the nitrite that's one thing, but I'm wondering why the ammonia level was higher today.

 

[OldMan47]

You will see the occasional move in ammonia or nitrite that doesn't make sense. Don't worry about a single reading like that. The important thing to monitor, and WD says this much more often than I do, is the overall trend of chemical tests if you just plot the results on a graph. There are lots of bumps and twists along the way but, if you draw a trend line through the points, you want to see movement in the right direction.

 

[BryceHockey]

I'm just bumping this thread, since it fell to the bottom of the second page and was harder to find.

The nitrite seems to be dropping again, hopefully this time it will stay low and not spike up like it previously did. For whatever reason the ammonia is not completely dropping after 12 hours, even though it previously managed to do so for nearly 2 weeks. Not too worried though, I'm crossing my fingers that both will drop very soon.

 

[OldMan47]

Actually, I just read through the set of readings that you posted and it looks like things are getting better to me. Not quite where you want them yet but moving along nicely.

 

[BryceHockey]

Actually, I just read through the set of readings that you posted and it looks like things are getting better to me. Not quite where you want them yet but moving along nicely.

Yes I would say that things are going better. Today I was very pleased to see the ammonia back to a pure 0.0, and the nitrite was down to around .2 ppm. It's progressing nicely, hopefully it just doesn't repeat what happened last time the nitrite went low.

 

[waterdrop]

 

[BryceHockey]

It has now been 20 days since the ammonia was consistently dropping to 0.0, yet the Nitrite is pretty much seeming unable to drop below .15 ppm. It got to this point before and then started slowing down in processing the ammonia. Is there anything I should do to speed this up that I've not already done?

 

[BryceHockey]

Seems that the nitrite got slightly worse today (deja vu) and is refusing to get below .1 consistently. It will hit that for 1 day and then gets worse.

 

[BryceHockey]

The nitrite shot up to .5, gotta love how this keeps repeating.. Get to .15 then stall and go higher, repeat.

 

[BryceHockey]

Today I was pleased to see the nitrite lower, at .15 ppm. However I then tested the ammonia, and it was at 1.0 ppm (the highest I have seen it in a whole month!).

I know that fishless cycling takes patience and that I partly need to let it run its course, but seriously I don't think the ammonia should still be having days where it is failing to process. The bacteria has not been improving and almost getting worse. I have not changed anything, the temperature is still 84-85 degrees F, ammonia is always 0 when 4 ppm is added, the filter is running just as well as it has been, the plants are thriving.

 

[waterdrop]

The bacteria and biofilters are fussy little biological things. They are not particularly predictable in "settling in." But in the much longer run they are very reliable at finally becoming the workhorse you want. Your log in the first post seems to indicate to me that you are 28 days in to this fishless cycle. You seem to have excellent control and are doing everything right, including a good seeding from your mature filter. I know its frustrating but I have to say that sometimes, even with MM seeding, 28 days is just not long enough. We have quite a few that seem to finish up somewhere between day 60 and day 70, although admittedly those are usually without any MM. To me you still look to be experiencing what I think of as the "stuttering effect" where there's a period of readouts that seem to "jump around" a bit at lower numbers and zero.. and its kind of during the period when the results are crossing over from being higher numbers to being just pure zeros every day but still not doing it within the desired 12 hour time frame.

(that's supposed to be a whole paragraph to keep you busy instead of me saying "Be patient!" )

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BryceHockey]

(that's supposed to be a whole paragraph to keep you busy instead of me saying "Be patient!" )

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks WD, glad to have confirmation that nothing is wrong (most likely). It doesn't help when my family keeps asking "how much longer?" lol, they understand the cycling process and by no means think it's a waste of time, but of course are eager to have this tank up and running. It's in our living room so I'm constantly looking at it and noticing how empty it is.

I tried giving the bacteria a pep-talk but it doesn't seem to be working.

 

[waterdrop]

You can show them to the kids next time the filter is open. They are the brown stain on the media, lol.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BryceHockey]

The past few days have gotten worse, after the nitrite was staying at .2 for a while everything went bad today. I added baking soda because the pH was 7.0, I hope there isn't too much in the tank but I guess the big water change will get rid of it.

October 13
-Morning- pH: 7.0, Ammonia: 0.7 ppm, Nitrite: 0.5 ppm. Added 1 tbsp. of baking soda.