Ammonia Processing/nitrite Spike

[LionessN3cubs]

<Quote>The fact that your A-bacs are processing ammonia in under 24hours by Day 18 is good. Now comes the greater patience period. Expect the Nitrite to spike up to 5.0+. Expect it to keep showing you that spike for a long time, most often a longer time than it took to get the ammonia to drop. Now that ammonia is dropping it is definately not the time to raise ammonia back to 4ppm. Soon nitrites will spike and you will be dealing with too much of them. Just don't miss a day of adding back to the 2ppm you are doing. Keep testing every day and recording your log records clearly. Other than that big spike, don't worry about little ups and downs in nitrites, the measurements will wander around, it doesn't mean anything until the big spiking.<UNQUOTE>


Okay all you experienced people...I need help because now I think Im way more confused than I should be by now.

This snippet is from a post waterdrop made to stormy about stormy's cycle. I've read the fishless cycling pinned article...I get that much. But the specific posts to members tweak that pinned article a bit because obviously the person who posted that could only cover so much. Does this post mean that now that I have the nitrite spike (as of yesterday 5.0) that I should only be adding 2ppm of ammonia per day even tho the A's are taking a little over 24 hours to process roughly 4ppm? 2-3 ppm process in about 18 hours but not what I can best guess as 4...4 is taking a little over 24 hours (probably 28 hours maybe less).

 

[backtotropical]

Hi Lioness,

Lucky i'm still awake working on a report with FishForums flickering in the background, eh?

Ok, be confused no longer.

The reason Waterdrop advises to cut back ammonia to 2ppm is that by the time the nitrite oxidising bacteria (N-Bacs) get to work (they live life in the slow lane), there is already a huge build up of nitrite to deal with because of all the ammonia which has been processed by the already flourishing A-Bacs. As you can imagine, this will make it take longer for the N-Bacs to clear nitrite back to 0 as they are starting with a backlog.

If i'm being honest, it probably doesn't matter what you do just now so long as you keep adding ammonia. 2ppm, 4ppm, 1ppm, its almost irrelevant.

If you keep adding 4ppm until you are processing 4ppm in under 12 hrs, you will have assurance that you have built a large enough colony to do what you need, but the N-Bacs will have a big backlog to start with. This isn't an issue because once the A-Bacs are processing 4ppm in 12 hours, you can do a big water change to reduce nitrite to a reasonable level then cut back to 2ppm ammonia.

Otherwise, you could cut back to 2ppm ammonia just now, giving the N-Bacs an easier time with the backlog, but you won't have the assurance about your A-Bacs colony just yet. This would then have to be done after the N-Bacs start processing.

Its all swings and roundabouts. I personally would keep adding 4ppm ammonia until you are processing that within 12 hrs, then do a big water change to give the N-Bacs a chance, but it really doesn't matter too much.

Even if you never cut back ammonia to 2ppm, your filter will still cycle, it just takes a little bit longer.

Hope this puts your mind at ease slightly.

Cheers

BTT

 

[rdd1952]

Cutting back is fine and most likely preferred. I wrote that thread a long time ago. I need to go in and edit it now that I know more than I did then. As BTT mentioned, byt the time the bacteria is processing 4 ppm of ammonia per day (more than your fish will produce unless you have a heavily stocked tank of big waste producers, there is plenty of bacteria here and also a hugh amount of nitrite. Cutting back will help speed the process. I pretty sure that a large water change to lower the nitrite back to zero at this point would be a good idea. That way the nitrite is back close to zero and not at some very high level of probably 20 ppm or more.

 

[waterdrop]

Totally agree with BTT and RDD.

For you in particular Lioness, at the point in the fishless where I think you are, I agree with BTT for you to keep adding 4ppm a little longer while your A-bac population increases to final size. As BTT says, once it processes 4ppm down to zero within 12 hours, say for a couple days in a row, then I would do a large water change and lower your ammonia-adds to 2ppm.

There was another thread somewhere where I explained to someone that once you've been though it once and have the confidence in it, you know how dramatic the final Nitrite drop will be and that it will eventually come, so you realize that whether you add 2 or 3 or 4ppm during the last nitrite spike stage doesn't ultimately matter because you trust that the N-bac population will get big enough to handle any of these amounts.

What the fine tuning (dropping your adds down to 2ppm or 3ppm instead of 4ppm while Nitrites are 5+) accomplishes is to let you see the process maybe a little better, which sometimes helps a little with the patience thing.

(The reason it lets you see a little better is that your Nitrite test can only show you stuff between about 0 and 5ppm, and if Nitrite is way up at 20ppm and your small pop of N-bacs is only processing it down from 20ppm to 18ppm in 24 hours, all you get to see is Nitrite=5 one day, and Nitrite=5 the next day and you think nothing is happening. Make sense?)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LionessN3cubs]

Totally agree with BTT and RDD.

For you in particular Lioness, at the point in the fishless where I think you are, I agree with BTT for you to keep adding 4ppm a little longer while your A-bac population increases to final size. As BTT says, once it processes 4ppm down to zero within 12 hours, say for a couple days in a row, then I would do a large water change and lower your ammonia-adds to 2ppm.

There was another thread somewhere where I explained to someone that once you've been though it once and have the confidence in it, you know how dramatic the final Nitrite drop will be and that it will eventually come, so you realize that whether you add 2 or 3 or 4ppm during the last nitrite spike stage doesn't ultimately matter because you trust that the N-bac population will get big enough to handle any of these amounts.

What the fine tuning (dropping your adds down to 2ppm or 3ppm instead of 4ppm while Nitrites are 5+) accomplishes is to let you see the process maybe a little better, which sometimes helps a little with the patience thing.

(The reason it lets you see a little better is that your Nitrite test can only show you stuff between about 0 and 5ppm, and if Nitrite is way up at 20ppm and your small pop of N-bacs is only processing it down from 20ppm to 18ppm in 24 hours, all you get to see is Nitrite=5 one day, and Nitrite=5 the next day and you think nothing is happening. Make sense?)

~~waterdrop~~

okay that makes perfect sense. So I will just keep adding what my best guess at 4ppm is for a little while longer. Yesterday I put in 3 mls and at 12 hours it was at .50 so today Im trying to be more exact about knowing how much I'm adding. I put in 3 mls again and am going to test in a little bit once it has a chance to circulate to see how high that makes the ammonia so I know whether I need to add more or not. Thanks !

 

[waterdrop]

Good show Lioness. Precision and good notes just make any information process easier in the long run.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[iankent]

Hi Lioness

Just a suggestion - if you want to more accurately raise the ammonia level, you can use the Aquarium Calculator link at the top of the forum page, or the ammonia calculator at my website which I think is a bit clearer http/aquarium.stormail.co.uk/ammonia.php. I've been using it and it appears to calculate the right amount, it just depends whether your confident to dump a load of ammonia in at once!