About To Start Fishless Cylcle.....

[Mowbz]

Ok, day 5 today, tank stats are;

pH - 8.0
Ammonia - 2ppm
Nitrite - 2ppm
Nitrate - 5ppm

Ive seem a lot of other peoples log, and i never see people complain its going quickly, but i see a lot about its being slooooow. Its making me worry that i have Nitrite and Nitrate at just 5 days, and ammonia is evidently being processed already. From the speed it took last time, ill be at 0ppm by this time tomorrow, as it only took 24hours from the first doe to drop to 2ppm, and another 24 to zero.

Is this right?

Thanks in advance

 

[fluttermoth]

Some cycles do go very quickly; you might just have been lucky, but it may still stall, so don't get too pleased yet!

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with FM. For whatever reason you may have obtained a decent number of cells and are off to a fast start. Just keep a steady log of your data, regardless of what it is and keep a sharp eye on your parameters. Per some of the earlier things discussed I often feel it can be a bit of a help to allow the ammonia to sit at zero ppm for the rest of a day until the dosing hour is reached. There is some evidence for this being a good technique with autotrophic species from WWTP world. Dosing at the same hour of the day (assuming ammonia reached zero at some point within the previous 24 hours) is really good for reducing the confusion in reading your log. The best understanding comes from looking at a week or so of data rather than the "noise" of a particular day.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Mowbz]

it may still stall, so don't get too pleased yet!

Definately not pleased, i was pretty worried, i thought something was wrong!

Agree with FM. For whatever reason you may have obtained a decent number of cells and are off to a fast start. Just keep a steady log of your data, regardless of what it is and keep a sharp eye on your parameters. Per some of the earlier things discussed I often feel it can be a bit of a help to allow the ammonia to sit at zero ppm for the rest of a day until the dosing hour is reached. There is some evidence for this being a good technique with autotrophic species from WWTP world. Dosing at the same hour of the day (assuming ammonia reached zero at some point within the previous 24 hours) is really good for reducing the confusion in reading your log. The best understanding comes from looking at a week or so of data rather than the "noise" of a particular day.

~~waterdrop~~

Is it possible these "cells" were acquired from plants bought from pets at home? Both were in the tank for a few days before someone on here suggested i remove them. There has been nothing else "foreign" added to the tank apart from brand new decor that was washed first.

Testing and dosing is always done at the same time, i dont have a choice! I leave the house for work at 7.20, and im not back till around 18.30, so its done once im in, around 7pm each night.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Mowbz]

Day 6 of the cycle and we have;

pH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0.50ppm
Nitrite - 5+ppm (its off the chart, way darker than the last measure on the api kit
Nitrate - 20-30ppm (halfway between 20 and 40 marks)

Any ideas on the plants?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, it's always possible that some bacteria ride in on plants but probably the majority still come from the water system, there can be significant numbers of these in typical water systems (not enough to make people sick but enough to get a fishless cycle started.) WD

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

Wow, nitrite spike already lol. Ok so start dosing ammonia 2-3ppm. And then wait until your bacteria that then converts nitrites into nitrates. A good sign is that your nitrates is already started to go up, which means nitrites are being processed.

This stage 'stage 2' is the longest part of the cycle. This can take weeks longer than stage 1. Also this is the stage where it could stall and also have a ph crash. So keep a close eye on ph and nitrates as high nitrates can cause a ph crash and therefore stall your cycle. But looks like you've got off to a flying start

 

[Mowbz]

Yes, it's always possible that some bacteria ride in on plants but probably the majority still come from the water system, there can be significant numbers of these in typical water systems (not enough to make people sick but enough to get a fishless cycle started.) WD

I couldnt get any readings for nitrite in my tap water, but my tap water does have 40-60ppm Nitrates. This dropped the day after the water went in my tank, but has subsequently risen again since i started dosing the tank!

Thanks for putting this straight for me, i was wondering if i had screwed things up by introducing live plants too early!

This stage 'stage 2' is the longest part of the cycle. This can take weeks longer than stage 1.

I was told stage one will take weeks, and we're into stage two after just 5 days! Its all a bit scary! Fluttermoth mentioned the stall in the cycle, and the possibility of a pH crash yesterday i think. I test my water every day at the same time (about 7pm) and ill continue to post on here in the hope that if i dont see the tank crashing, someone will!

The pH seems to stay pretty much stable until there is either ammonia added (pH goes up to around 8.2) or once the ammonia has "consumed" and the reading is zero, and the ammonia goes back down by about 1, to around 7.2-7.4 . It stays pretty much stable in between, but we'll see what the next week brings me!

Thanks again for the helps guys!

Wow, nitrite spike already lol. Ok so start dosing ammonia 2-3ppm. And then wait until your bacteria that then converts nitrites into nitrates. A good sign is that your nitrates is already started to go up, which means nitrites are being processed.

Ill take the above advice (because in a noob and cant be trusted on my own!), and if the tank is at 0ppm Ammonia this evening (its been processing 4ppm of ammonia in 48 hrs since i started, so by historical results, this should be this evening.) ill does it back to just 3ppm.

Why do we drop the dose?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

The reason for the drop in dose is to get ticking the ammonia processing bacteria going, while you wait for the nitrite bacteria to come along. Nitrite bacteria that you are encouraging to grow prefer very low concentrations of nitrite - they do best around 0.17ppm (not sure on the exact number, but it is about that low). If the nitrites get too high, you can start to encourage the wrong type of bacteria to grow. So, by dropping the ammonia dose slightly you are giving the nitrite bacs a chance to catch up. In theory, the nitrite colony needs to be close to three times as big as the ammonia colony. (1ppm ammonia processes to 2.7ppm nitrite then 3.6 ppm nitrate.)

 

[waterdrop]

The original reason that OM47 and I began dropping the dose to 2-3ppm during Stage 2 was simply to delay the buildup of too much nitrite and nitrate with the eventual percentage of nitric acid, thus allowing you to go longer before possibly having to perform a large water change. Since that time it is true that we've found a few articles that indicate that -very- low concentrations of nitrite (such as the 0.17ppm which I believe Hovanec mentions) may even further optimize N-Bac growth. The down side of that of course that doing a lot of water changes to create those special conditions would kind of take away one of the advantages that fishless cycling has over fish-in cycling, namely a lack of water changing.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Welcome back waterdrop. Always good to see you on the boards!

 

[waterdrop]

Thanks Eagle, my work finally settled down enough that I got in two nice tank cleaning weekends in a row and a visit back to the boards. Certainly looks like the beginners section is still going well and I assume OM47 looks in occasionally?

WD

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Haven't seen him on here recently.

 

[Mowbz]

Ok so, big changes have happened in my tank since i last wrote on here.

I had to go away for two days. Ordinarily (had there been fish in the tank) i would have simply not gone, but it was too good an opportunity to miss while my tank was merely cycling. I came home, and everything had been off, for about 24hrs according to my neighbour. The substation near our house had been down while they repaired it, with NO warning from my supplier. Not happy about this either.

As a noob, im unsure what damage this is likely to have done to my new bacteria, so thought what the heck, if im going to end up with nothing, why not do the proposed gravel to sand change now etc, wait for it to settle, and carry on (in the hope not too much damage was done.

Obviously the water wasnt tested or dosed with ammonia while i was away. I dosed it on the Friday night, and it would have been gone by Sunday. Sunday night's stats were;

pH - 7.8
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0.5ppm
Nitrate 20ppm

Last night i changed over from gravel to sand. Despite having hand cleaned the sand, i also used a small awl to poke about 300 holes in the sand bag, just big enough to let water run out, but not take all of the sand. I put the whole 25kg bag in a bucket, and then left a hose running into the bag for about 4 hours. This left me with a half empty bag of sand, the rest was in the bucket clean, as was the stuff in the bag.

I put about 2 thirds of the bag into the tank last night, which has given about 1 inch covoverage over the base of the tank, but it also made the water cloudy as hell, with a thick scum across the top. I decided rather than having my brand new patially cycled filter choked up with this, to leave the filter running in a bucket of water removed from the tank prior to the sand going in. The heater was in there also, but i turned it down a bit. I didnt want the bloody thing exploding while trying to make a bucket of water reach 30'C!

Im not sure if i did anthing wrong, but the tank was so manky i did a 75% water change, then re-arranged the decor now the live plants are out.

In changing my water so soon, am i likely to have done any damage to the filter? I didnt see the use in testing the tank while it was looking so disgusting last night with sand cloud floating about, so i left it overnight, and this morning it looks lovely and clean. (I know that clean water doesnt mean "good" water")

Ill test the tank again this evening, and post my results.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Smells a bit fishy]

You might have had some bacteria die off. It shouldn't take long for them to be fighting fit, also I heard someone say, bacteria don't die, they just lay dormant until the environment is ok for them to survive, although I don't know how true this is