Ammonia Or Ammonium ?

[b3cca]

Been fishless cylcling a new tank using clean off household ammonia for a round 5 weeks.
Using API test kit
Temp 30 degrees c
dosed to 3 ppm and then re dosed back to 3 ppm every time ammonia dropped to .25 ppm.
 
First 3 weeks everything went fine, had ammonia dropping to 0 fine in 24 hrs had nitrites spike and then drop to 0 and high (over 100) nitrates.
So thinking I was just about there with this cycle I did a huge 90% PWC and redosed ammonia to 3 ppm
 
 
For the past week I have added 1ppm daily to feed bacteria  and my readings have been a constant 
 
Ammonia/Ammoniun  1 ppm
Nitrites                       0 ppm
Nitrates                      10 + ppm
 
My tap water reads 0 ammonia, 0 nitrates
 
 
As my Nitrates are again rising then my cycle must be working to a certain extent and I thought it had just slowed to get rid of the remaining ammonia until I read about low PH and ammonium. 
 
Now My tap water PH is currently around 6 - 6.4 max, so could that 1 ppm ammonia reading I'm getting actually be harmless ammonium and not ammonia at all ?
After afew days the tank PH sits at a steady 6 ppm, which it does in my other established tanks without a problem
 
Not sure where to go from here ?
 
Do I add coral or something to raise PH while it cycles
 
Do I redose any more ammonia or wait and see if that 1ppm ever drops
 
Do I just presume it's only an ammonium reading and take it as 0 ammonia
 
If my cycle had stalled or crashed then how is it still keeping nitrites at 0 and yet increasing nitrates 
 
Basically does anybody have experience with soft acidic water and ammonium readings

 

[tunagirll]

I think the issue here is the 1ppm daily feedings. If you don't have fish yet, you can feed once every five days to keep bacteria alive.
 
Basically leave the tank now with no feedings until ammonia and nitrites are 0
Then dose 3ppm
Wait 24 hours
If ammonia and nitrites as 0, then your tank is cycled
 
If they are not 0, then wait until they are both 0.
 
Once they are both 0, dose 3ppm again
Wait 24 hours... etc
 
Once you have both ammonia and nitrites at 0, do your large water change.
At that point you only feed once every five days.
 
Is this for a freshwater tank? If it is, then I would recommend the best course of action in regards to pH is to look for fish that like the acidity of your tap water 6-6.4pH. This is by far the best way to handle pH issues, because once you start dicking about with the pH things can go all pear shaped. Fish need pH stability more than the actual pH itself, so having to alter it every time you do a water change is going to cause you some trouble when you are new. (I went the same path myself)
 
Hope this helps!

 

[CSnyder00]

I mirror the advice here. I think this is now a waiting game. Seems like you have a great start.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Here is the problem, cycling changes when at a lower pH. At the level your tank is out there is virtually no NH3. At a reading of ammonia at 1.0 ppm in a pH of 6.0 and a temp of 80F your tank has .0007 ppm of NH3 and .9993 ppm of NH4.
 
This means you need to have either bacteria which have adapted or else strains which are able to uptake NH4 (yes they do exists). research has show some of the same bacteria in higher pH water with similar total ammonia levels have receptors for NH4. the thing is, the bacteria process NH4 less efficiently than NH3.
 
Now here is the rub. if one has bacteria working fine at 6.5 and up and you frop them into more acid water you kill most of them, So there are basically two ways to get a tank cycled for acid water. One is to start off cycling the tank fishlessly at a pH of about 7.0. Once there and handling the amonia etc, you drop the ph by about .2 and redose ammonia and wait until it is all gone as is nitrite. This can take a few days to a couple of weeks. And once you have a cycled tank at 6.8, you drop it another .2 and repeat the process. This way you keep some bacteria alive and reproducing and will be the ones that can handle the lower pH and they will multiply.
 
I would be careful
 
My experience in this respect showed me another way. I had fish brought into a pH 4.2 tank. I was using the method above in another tank to cycle filters to function at 6.0 or a tad below. i was gradually bringing the fish up to the 6.0 level and the plant was to move the 6.0 cycled filters into the tank when it hit 6.0. Along the way I had ammonia reading at .25 and .50 ppm. I only did the normal water change since I knew no NH3 was present. What happened in this tank was that by the time I got lose to 5.0 I could no longer detect ammonia and never saw nitrite. the tank had self cycled. I never figured it out. But I know an importer of acid water fish who claimed that he has the same thing happen- he never cycles is tanks when he adds new one tanks.
 
Now here is the rub, While NH4 is not anywhere near as toxic as NH3, long term exposure or exposure to higher levels or a combination will definitely harm fish sooner or later. Ideally no established tank, regardless of the pH, should have any ammonia or nitrite.
 
The nitrite bacs in 4.0 pH water are the same as they are at 9 pH water. if you are really curious about this topic, Have a read here: "Nitrification in a Biofilm at Low pH Values: Role of In Situ Microenvironments and Acid Tolerance" http/aem.asm.org/content/72/6/4283.full

 

[b3cca]

Hiya , grrr all this science and chemistry is beyond my brain power lol.
 
Yeah Tunagirll I only really have blackwater type fish amyways and my 2 other tanks run around 6 ph no problems, once this one is cycled I will not be trying to adjust PH at all, i just thought maybe it would help to raise it just to get this cycle finished.
 
Thanks twotank , yes that's my problem I've been reading and reading about low Ph, NH3 and NH4 and am probably confused myself now lol.
 
I'm not in any rush at all which is why I never bothered seeding anything from my other established tanks so I'll just leave things as they are for a week or so and check parameters everyday to see if anything changes then ?

 

[b3cca]

Well 10 days on and it's still pretty much reading the same apart from the nitrates have incresed from around 10 ppm to well over 40 ppm now.
 
I haven't added anything at for 10 days but am still getting that 1 ppm on the ammonia test which by now I presume is basically all ammonium showing on the test and not actual ammonia  - can we even get seperate NH3 and NH4 test kits or just the combined one I have from API ?
 
As I have had nitrite spike and fall and nitrates are rising noramally then my cycle must be working somehow to some extent.
 
This weekend I'm going to do a large PWC and then wash and squeeze in my established media from my other tank into this one and see if anything changes - either way it's pretty good having to read up and understand water chemistry, PH buffers and how soft acididic water is a pain to cycle lol.

 

[Gvilleguy]

B3cca - how goes the cycle? Reading your post was like re-reading my posts on this forum from 2010. I have 6.0 pH tap water with almost zero hardness, and fishless cycling my tank was VERY difficult. Took several months. TwoTank's reply to you gave all the good technical stuff, so I won't go there.
 
Sounds like you are on the right path, and that your nitrite-bacteria are kicking butt. Just have to get the ammonia-bacteria that last little distance.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You can get a kit from SeaChem that tests NH3 and Total ammonia.

 
MultiTest: Ammonia
Product Description
This kit measures total (NH3 and NH4+) and free ammonia (NH3 only) down to less than 0.05 mg/L and is virtually interference free in marine and fresh water. Free ammonia is the toxic form of ammonia (vs. ionized Ammonia NH4+ which is non-toxic) and thus it is much more important to keep an eye on the level of free ammonia in your system. This kit is based on the same gas exchange technology that is used in the Ammonia Alert™ and thus is the only kit on the market that can read levels of free ammonia while using ammonia removal products such as Prime®, Safe™, AmGuard™ and any similar competing products.

from http/www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/MT_Ammonia.html
 
But why not use the calculator here http/www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/FreeAmmonia.php Just set the salinity to 0 for fw tanks and fill the rest in based on your test results.

 

[b3cca]

Oh yeah thanx I used that calculator and had only about 0.0003 actual NH3 last week.
 
My tap water is up to about 6.8 P.H think maybe it had lowered because of the storms and floods maybe -- not sure.
 
Anyways after a huge water change and a P.H at 6.8 plus squished all my established sponges from my other tank in this one seems to have done the trick.
 
I dosed the ammonia back up to 3 ppm and 24 hours later I had no ammonia, no nitrite and less than 10 nitrate.
Did this for 3 days in a row and ammonia and nitrite both stayed at 0 and nitrates rose to over 20 which means Everything is now working fine.
 
I did another huge PWC to lower nitrates again and I put my 5 cherry Barbs in there 2 days ago and will just now monitor it everyday for the next week or so to ensure there are no mini spikes or peoblems.
 
Thanx everyone for the help especially Twotank who understands NH3 and Nh4 far more than me lol