After A Week Of Cycling, Something Is Wrong...

[quantumnerd]

Yeah. So I'm in week 1 of fish-in cycling.

The platys were going around the top, acting all motionleess etc. Someone said they were supposed to be "hardy fish". Well, the barbs seem hardier. They both don't go to the top, and don't die.

Yes, that's right. They don't die.

I checked my tank today, and orange platy was dead. Even stranger, I got the master API test kit, and guess what! 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 0 nitrate. Yep. Zero-zip-zilch. I'm going to test the kit by using an ammonia solution, cause these readings are SKEWED.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Well with regards the death fish-in cycling is not a nice process for any species of fish however hardy. no fish is guaranteed to make it safely through a cycle, if they were then we wouldn't need to recommend fishless cycles to people would we?! It's perfectly possible and even likley that the most hardy fish will become ill or die during the stress of cycling.

with regards the test readings, i agree that you should test an ammonia solution to see how it comes out. it's unlikely that you'll have no ammonia at this stage. however if you can give us some more details like what water changes you've been doing and so on then we'll have a much clearer idea of the validity of this result.

 

[quantumnerd]

Haven't done a single water change since I set the tank up, (approx. six days ago) since I saw no need to. But these test results are disturbing...

My platys show the signs of being suffocated by ammonia etc, but my test results show zip, zero, zilch.
Testing my tap water would be useless, given my tank is showing minimum readings.
I mean, I have an uncultured bio-filter. I don't think it could actually improve the quality of the water, ya know?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Well if you've done no water changes that's clearly why the platy died, in a fish-in cycle you need to do daily water changes to keep ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm as a maximum.

i don't believe the test results one iota, if you want to stand any hope of saving your remaining fish do an immediate 50% water change and then daily changes after that point.

take a sample of water to the lfs and ask them to test it and write down the numbers to compare to your readings, obviously if they're different then there's something up with the test kit.

 

[quantumnerd]

My readings won't be that hard to remember...
0 0 0.

I'll do a different test, this time I'll get water from the bottom of the tank.
Last time since I scraped the top of the water, the test results might not be the most accurate.

AFK to test water as of now.

 

[quantumnerd]

I got a sample from the bottom of my tank:

Still zero results.

I'm going to have to take a sample to the lfs like you said, MW, and i'll also have to test a 8 ppm ammonia solution.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

the impoirtant thing is in the mean time assume the worst and start doing 50% water changes every day or you're going to start loosing fish very quickly.

 

[quantumnerd]

Yeeeeeaaaah....

I would have actually liked it more if my test kit actually showed that there was ammonia..

If the lfs says that there's nothing in my water, then what do I do?

 

[Honeythorn]

Do the water changes anyway. You WILL get ammonia at some point , fish produce waste, therefore you will get ammonia. You need to remove that by doing water changes every day or two.