Bojangles Fishless Cycle

Where abouts is fish alive in Durham?, think i know where it is but not 100% sure

I thought I mentioned this the other day.

Its on the road between Durham and Sherbern, near Gilesgate.

Its on the Dragonville Retail Park - the one where that massive Tescos is. You can see it from the main road.
 
Where abouts is fish alive in Durham?, think i know where it is but not 100% sure

I thought I mentioned this the other day.

Its on the road between Durham and Sherbern, near Gilesgate.

Its on the Dragonville Retail Park - the one where that massive Tescos is. You can see it from the main road.

Oh aye i must be thinking of some place else then
 
Day 5 of my cycle

Ammonia - 1 ppm
Nitrite - Gone through the roof
Nitrate - 40 ppm

I need abit advice

I read somewhere else once nitrite goes off the chart i should half my ammonia dose should i be doing that or leave it as it is and take it back up o 5 ppm?
 
seems fairly early on in a cycle for nitrite to go off the chart but maybe you're just one of the lucky few getting a very speedy cycle so never mind.

it's really a choice for you, there's a few schools of thought that we can't always agree on here!!

what happens is every 1ppm of ammonia that is processed produces 2.7ppm of nitrite (might have got the exact numbers wrong but it's along those lines) so when you get to the point that you're putting in 5ppm of ammonia every day or so the nitrite will just build up massively. there is some evidence that when nitrites are too high they can inhibit the cycle, the other problem is that when the reading is consistently off the chart we have no realy way of monitoring nitrite progression, weather it is falling at all or just continuing to build indicating some problem with the NBacs.

so you have a choice of a few methods here

1 - you can just keep popping the 5ppm in every day (or whenever the ammonia drops down to 0) and wait for the nitrites to drop down to a level where you can measure them again

2 - you can just put 2/3ppm of ammonia in and this means you'll have less nitrite building up, it'll still be off the scale at first but it'll come back to a measurable level a bit quicker, then when ammonia and nitrite are both droppping to 0 in around 24hrs you ease back up to 5ppm of ammonia over a few days and then wait for it to drop in 12 hrs

3 - you can choose either to add 5ppm or 2/3ppm of ammonia but you start doing water changes to bring nitrite down to a measurable level every few days which makes it easier to meaure and makes sure that there's no nitrites inhibiting growth.

normally me and WD will say drop it down and do water changes, rabbut will say to leave well alone and don't do water changes. :lol: that may not be the most helpful thing that we can't really agree but it's mostly because every cycle is different so we've all had our own experiences and had things work or not work for us and the people we've been working with.
 
seems fairly early on in a cycle for nitrite to go off the chart but maybe you're just one of the lucky few getting a very speedy cycle so never mind.



1 - you can just keep popping the 5ppm in every day (or whenever the ammonia drops down to 0) and wait for the nitrites to drop down to a level where you can measure them again

2 - you can just put 2/3ppm of ammonia in and this means you'll have less nitrite building up, it'll still be off the scale at first but it'll come back to a measurable level a bit quicker, then when ammonia and nitrite are both droppping to 0 in around 24hrs you ease back up to 5ppm of ammonia over a few days and then wait for it to drop in 12 hrs

3 - you can choose either to add 5ppm or 2/3ppm of ammonia but you start doing water changes to bring nitrite down to a measurable level every few days which makes it easier to meaure and makes sure that there's no nitrites inhibiting growth.

normally me and WD will say drop it down and do water changes, rabbut will say to leave well alone and don't do water changes. :lol: that may not be the most helpful thing that we can't really agree but it's mostly because every cycle is different so we've all had our own experiences and had things work or not work for us and the people we've been working with.

Sorry forgot to mention i was using a small bit of mature media to boost :blush: it not very much i would say half a fluval 2 sponge size.

Just did another test to make sure my 1st nitrite test was correct and this one is saying 5- ppm

I think i will go with the water changing option should i do a big water change every other day or small ones?



j
 
aaaaah yeah even the smallest bit of mature media can make a big difference, a mature bacteria colony can double in 24hrs so the rate of growth is much faster than that of a new bacteria colony.

what i'd do for now is do whatever water change you need to do to drop nitrite down to around 2ppm, then just keep measuring it and whenever it gets off the scale then do the same thing. the frequency and volme of water changes will depend on the progress of your cycle but just work within those guidelines.
 
aaaaah yeah even the smallest bit of mature media can make a big difference, a mature bacteria colony can double in 24hrs so the rate of growth is much faster than that of a new bacteria colony.

what i'd do for now is do whatever water change you need to do to drop nitrite down to around 2ppm, then just keep measuring it and whenever it gets off the scale then do the same thing. the frequency and volme of water changes will depend on the progress of your cycle but just work within those guidelines.

Thnx MW :good:

God knows where i would be without your advice :blush: lol
 
Right i did a 70% water change waited an hour before doing another test and nitrite was high but not too high then i tested a few hours later the readings are sky high again the test is a dark purple colour so thats 5+ppm should i just wait it out till it starts to drop or do more water changes?

Im just a little worried incase my cycle stalls i read in the fishless cycle topic that the test will go green when nitrite goes of the scale so i dont know if im worry about nothing :blush:
 
Im just a little worried incase my cycle stalls i read in the fishless cycle topic that the test will go green when nitrite goes of the scale so i dont know if im worry about nothing :blush:

Funny you should mention that, I was wondering exactly the same thing. However, I left the nitrite test to run the full five minutes (which the thread says you don't really need to) and my test didn't go green. It stayed the purple suggesting 5+ ppm.

I don't think this would stall the cycle, with the high nitrites. According to what MW was saying, if you're topping the Ammonia up to 5ppm then it's processing in 12 hours or so the Nitrite level would be in the region of 13.5ppm - way way past what the API kit can read.

I'm interested in the answer to the water changes question too...
 
Two answers here. For the hijacker, cold water will not stop the cycle or kill off the bacteria. It will slow the growth though.
Second answer, when the nitrites first go off the scale they are not nearly high enough to slow the n-bacs progress. Once it has been a few days and you have no idea how high they might be, the threat is greater. Before you let it go that long, I would do another large water change just to find out where I am and to be able to tell which way things are moving. You may find that very soon your levels of nitrite will be dropping by themselves because of the mature media seeding that you did.
 
. You may find that very soon your levels of nitrite will be dropping by themselves because of the mature media seeding that you did.

Looks like its happened ovenight :D

Day 7 of Fishless cycle

12 hour test

Ammonia - 0ppm (-2 ) added 4 ppm
Nitrite - 1 ppm (-4 ppm)
Nitrate 20 ppm
PH 7.9
High PH 8
 
Right i did a 70% water change waited an hour before doing another test and nitrite was high but not too high then i tested a few hours later the readings are sky high again the test is a dark purple colour so thats 5+ppm should i just wait it out till it starts to drop or do more water changes?

Im just a little worried incase my cycle stalls i read in the fishless cycle topic that the test will go green when nitrite goes of the scale so i dont know if im worry about nothing :blush:

It seems from some recent tests that the API kit doesn't go green anymore. I'm not sure when the sticky was written, and I wanted some more 'observations' before I asked anyone to change it, but my results are below from when my NitrIte levels were just starting to climb:

5ml Tank Water: Drops went deep purple in bottom of tube BEFORE capping. After 5 minutes color was like the 1ppm but very 'transparent'
2.5ml Tank Water / 2.5ml Tap Water: Drops went deep purple in bottom of tube BEFORE capping. After 5 minutes color was like the 1ppm but very 'transparent'
1ml Tank Water / 4 ml Tap Water: Drops went in pale blue, (perhaps slight purple tinge), after capping and shaking still blueish. After 5 minutes 2ppm NitrIte.

So it seems that now the NitrIte tests almost go VERY purple, and then fade out if you leave it the 5 minutes when they are off the scale. If you are unsure test like above to be sure for yourself. Now I just put the drops in the tube, and if they are purple before I get a chance to cap it, then I just dump the whole lot and take it as an 'off-scale' reading :good:
 
Just did a quick test to see if mine go purple before capping because i know thats what was happening yesterday before the water change and now they are staying blue a few seconds before changing to deep purple

The Nitrite test card is really stupid in my opinion becuse 1.0 ppm and 5 ppm look to much like the same colour while 2.0 ppm is totaly different

My ammonia is dropping well after 24 hours and afte it dropping nearly 2 ppm overnight im going to start testing every 12 hours now and hope that Nitrite starts to follow suit
 

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