Ammonia Problem...

[DJ_$ure$hot]

Hi peeps,

Well here I am popping my fish forum's cherry with my 1st ever topic post I've been reading some other post's after searches on Google for some info & have found it very informative. So I decided to become a member!!

Basically, I have recently got into the aquarist hobby & I really am intrigued by it all. I find it all so interesting & can see myself doing this for years to come I guess it all comes down to experience & learning from your mistakes, but I keep learning about things that I shouldnt have done from the start. I have studied most things & understand the importance of water chemistry etc etc.

I am currently trying to cycle my 90 litre tank ( Aqua One AR620). I have 8 Lemon tetra in there. I have now had this cycling for 2 weeks & 1 day & I still have no reading of nitrites & my ammonia is reading about 1ppm (maybe a tiny bit more). It has been reading this for around 8 days now. I unfortunately got some bad advice from the petshop when I took my 1st sample of water in there to get tested. I bought a sample test kit @ the same time, but I was also told that I should use ammo-lock. I used it after doing a 35% water change. After I used it I decided to read up about it, to find out that you really shouldnt use this chemical & just persist with water changes until the ammonia drops & nitrites rise into the next stage of the cycle.

I have done 20-30% water changes every day since adding ammo-lock (& threw away the bottle after using it once) & I still have no change in ammonia. I have been thoroughly vacuuming the gravel & have really cut back on feeding. I have removed my live plants incase they were decaying by chance. I am also adding in Stress Zyme as reqired & using Stress Coat to condition the water.

I am really bamboozled as to why my tank is not yet taking the next step in the cycle. Your experienced input & answers on what to do next would be greatly appreciated

 

[Miss Wiggle]

hi there, welcome to the forum and to fishkeeping.

sorry to hear that you've had some bad advice but you seem to be on the right track now researching and learning for yourself so kudos to you for that.

Just incase you haven't already read them check out all the pinned topics on cycling at the top of this forum, there's a handful of them and they'll all help enhance your knowledge on the subject.

The first thing to consider is that every cycle varies in speed, but they often take several weeks before anything much happens so I wouldn't be too desperatley alarmed if it's not progressed yet, it probably is progressing just going slowly. you do find cycles go in fits and bursts sometimes, you may see no movement at all then all of a sudden in a couple of days it's gone through a whole phase of cycling and onto the next part.

However there's a couple of things we can check to make sure you're on the right track. Firstly pH, what is yours? The cycling process forces pH down, if it drops below about 6.5 it'll start to slow down and if it drops much below 6 the bacteria you need to produce can't live and as such nothing happens. So test your pH and let us know what reading you get. Also if you have a KH test kit then please get the reading for that also.

 

[DJ_$ure$hot]

Thanks heaps for the reply miss wiggle

My Ph is sitting @ 7.2, unfortunately I dont have a Kh test kit...

Could it be an issue of overstocking? I didnt think that 8 lemon tetra's would be too much

Could it be the ammolock that has completely screwed me?!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

no problem re the kh test kit, if the pH is steady at 7.2 then you can be fairly safe to assume the KH is decent in your water. you may want to get a test kit down the line as it's useful to know what you'rs is, but unless you start to have pH problems it's not essential.

no 8 lemon tetra's is not overstocked on a 90l tank. the general guideline for stocking is 1" of fish per us gallon of water. You're tank is 24 gallons, so 24" of fish. Lemon tetra's get to 2" each so that's 16" of fish. not even fully stocked let alone overstocked, particularly as you're fish will most likley be juveniles and smaller than 2".

what test kit are you using, brand name please. is it liquid or paper strips?

 

[DJ_$ure$hot]

no 8 lemon tetra's is not overstocked on a 90l tank. the general guideline for stocking is 1" of fish per us gallon of water. You're tank is 24 gallons, so 24" of fish. Lemon tetra's get to 2" each so that's 16" of fish. not even fully stocked let alone overstocked, particularly as you're fish will most likley be juveniles and smaller than 2".

what test kit are you using, brand name please. is it liquid or paper strips?

Well,

I understand the 1 inch per US gallon rule, but surely there's a rule on the amount of fish you should use for the intial cycling of a new aquarium?!

The test kit I use is the aquarium pharma kit (liquid)

 

[Miss Wiggle]

no hard and fast rule, not even a guideline for cycling with fish tbh. my personal view is that you need a reasonable amount of fish, if you have too few and you do daily water changes there will never be enough ammonia to get the cycle going, you need a semi-reasonable number of fish or it'll never get off the ground. I think the amount of fish is about right tbh.

I honestly think it's just a case of a bit of patience, these things do take time and I think it'll move on soon enough. You can try a really big water change (80%) if you like to try and kick start it a bit.