Cycle Question

[Lord Fishheart]

i have been cycling my juwel trigon 350 for around 3 weeks now. I added ammonia at the start up to 4 ppm, i waited for the ammonia to drop, which it did after a week. I then raised it back up to 4 ppm (saturday at 11am). It says in the pinned topic that once the ammonia is dropping from around 4ppm back to zero in 12 hours or less you have sufficient bacteria. However i have just done a water test and got the following results at 12pm sunday. Ammonia 2.0, nitrite 0.25 and nitrate 10. Has my cycle stalled. What do i do now?

 

[rabbut]

It certainly isn't moving fast... What's your pH on? What does nitrAte read from the tap?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, even the slowest "first-drop" from 5ppm to 0ppm is only about 2 weeks. Usually by 3 weeks 5ppm of ammonia is dropping to zero in a couple of days or a day or something like that.

I agree.. what's the pH? What are the tap stats? What's the temp?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Lord Fishheart]

Yes, even the slowest "first-drop" from 5ppm to 0ppm is only about 2 weeks. Usually by 3 weeks 5ppm of ammonia is dropping to zero in a couple of days or a day or something like that.

I agree.. what's the pH? What are the tap stats? What's the temp?

~~waterdrop~~

Did another full water test today

PH - 6.0
Ammonia 1.0
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 40

Tap Readings

PH 6.0
Nitrate 0

Temp is high 80s

BTW official start date for cycle was 21st Feb

 

[fishman3]

Yes, even the slowest "first-drop" from 5ppm to 0ppm is only about 2 weeks. Usually by 3 weeks 5ppm of ammonia is dropping to zero in a couple of days or a day or something like that.

I agree.. what's the pH? What are the tap stats? What's the temp?

~~waterdrop~~

Did another full water test today

PH - 6.0
Ammonia 1.0
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 40

Tap Readings

PH 6.0
Nitrate 0

Temp is high 80s

BTW official start date for cycle was 21st Feb

Lord fishheart i've just finished this process and I feel for you!!!

the pH looks very low to be honest and as your tap water isn't any better you need to consider baking soda (if fishless cycle) or crushed shell / coral in a filter bag in your filter to slowly add calcium ask your lfs for a few handfulls they usually oblige. You need to aim for the pH to be around 7.5 or 7 as a minimum in my limited experience.

below 6.5 the cycle usually slows if not stalls and below 6 you are into affecting the bacterial colony level. My advice would be to do an 80-90% water change and add some baking soda or API pH up liquid kit (which is more or less the same thing but about £7 more expensive!) ASAP.

After this you need to test your pH daily in order to take remedial action prior to a serious pH drop. with all the N's in the water ammonia, nitrite and nitrate this will soften the water quickly and you may have to keep your eye on this and be vigilant. Unfortunately i was in the same situation and i had a complete pH crash that wiped out my bacterial colony after 3 weeks so believe me when i say i feel for you....

also can you get your hands on any mature filter media from your lfs as this will boost your colony and speed up the process?

have you tested your water kH and gH levels? (another liquid reagent test kit for this im afraid but worth it as you will know what your dealing with from the outset!)

hope all goes well..i find the support from the people on here to be really beneficial and a BIG BIG help.. waterdrop in particular will ensure that you are on the right path...

keep us posted

Phil

 

[waterdrop]

OK, at about pH 6.2 you can expect a fishless cycle to "stall" and at 6.0 its pretty sure to be at a complete stop.

There's always a danger when we "helpers" jump back into a thread that we will have forgotten important information or will confuse you with one of the dozens of other cyclers! For the life of me I couldn't quite rustle up some of your basic info, LFH, so help me out.

Tank size (in L or US-G)?
Cycle type (Fishless or Fish-In?)
Days its been cycling?
Confident your ammonia is ok?
Live plants (none/few, medium, jungle?)
Substrate type?
Hour of day ammonia normally added:
Number of times you test per day?
Tap water stats?
Tap GH/KH if known:
Tank GH/KH if known:

I'd suggest 84F/29C for the cycling temp. Yours sounds a bit warm. Get back to us with above data.
~~waterdrop~~

 

[Lord Fishheart]

OK, at about pH 6.2 you can expect a fishless cycle to "stall" and at 6.0 its pretty sure to be at a complete stop.

There's always a danger when we "helpers" jump back into a thread that we will have forgotten important information or will confuse you with one of the dozens of other cyclers! For the life of me I couldn't quite rustle up some of your basic info, LFH, so help me out.

Tank size (in L or US-G)? 350 uk litres
Cycle type (Fishless or Fish-In?) fishless
Days its been cycling? since 21 February
Confident your ammonia is ok? Yes
Live plants (none/few, medium, jungle?) None
Substrate type? Sand
Hour of day ammonia normally added: Early morning
Number of times you test per day? 2
Tap water stats? PH 6.0 Ammonia 0. Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0
Tap GH/KH if known: Unknown
Tank GH/KH if known: Unknown

I'd suggest 84F/29C for the cycling temp. Yours sounds a bit warm. Get back to us with above data.
~~waterdrop~~

 

[rabbut]

Recalling your previous threads, you have realy soft water and a low pH from the tap. Do a large waterchange, as recomended above, and then wang in either crushed coral (for a general trop community tank) or Baking Powder/Soda if this is for your Discus tank and assuming you are buying local/German/wild stock Baking Powder and Soda both need disolving in tank water in a bucket before adding if it's already decorated, or they can make a mess

You want 1tsp of crushed coral in the filter per say 20g to start and tweak from there. For Bicarb, I'd add say 1tsp per gal to it and go from there.

Ammonia is Alkaline and will apply upward pressure on the pH.

Nitrate and Nitrite are acidic however, as pointed out above, and usualy run very high in a fishless cycle. This makes the cycle very prone to crashing, due to downward pressure on the pH being greater than the upward pressure on it

All the best
Rabbut

P.S. I see Waterdrop is posting ATM also, so I hope this doesn't duplicate his reply too much

 

[Lord Fishheart]

Recalling your previous threads, you have realy soft water and a low pH from the tap. Do a large waterchange, as recomended above, and then wang in either crushed coral (for a general trop community tank) or Baking Powder/Soda if this is for your Discus tank and assuming you are buying local/German/wild stock Baking Powder and Soda both need disolving in tank water in a bucket before adding if it's already decorated, or they can make a mess

You want 1tsp of crushed coral in the filter per say 20g to start and tweak from there. For Bicarb, I'd add say 1tsp per gal to it and go from there.

Ammonia is Alkaline and will apply upward pressure on the pH.

Nitrate and Nitrite are acidic however, as pointed out above, and usualy run very high in a fishless cycle. This makes the cycle very prone to crashing, due to downward pressure on the pH being greater than the upward pressure on it

All the best
Rabbut

P.S. I see Waterdrop is posting ATM also, so I hope this doesn't duplicate his reply too much

I should have mentioned I am no longer keeping Discus, I have moved over to Lake Malawi Mbuna's

 

[rabbut]

Want a lot of Coral Gravel in there then to maintain a nice high pH for them Alternatively, you could add your rockskape now and use say Ocean rock that's lime based instread

 

[backtotropical]

I should have mentioned I am no longer keeping Discus, I have moved over to Lake Malawi Mbuna's

Malawis like very hard and alkaline water, with a pH somewhere between 8 - 8.4. You should probably consider lots of calcium leaching rock as decor such as tufa rock and lava rock, and coral gravel as a substrate.

You really need to harden that water before adding Malawis to it. They won't be happy in pH 6........

BTT

edit: Rabbut beat me to it

 

[waterdrop]

Well, normally I'd recommend baking soda (because in fishless cycling you might as well take quick actions to not waste time and it'll all go out with the bathwater later so to speak) but needing 90 teaspoons (90 gallons) gives me pause, lol. Not sure how many teaspoons a typical little kitchen box of baking soda holds!

So there are some trade-offs to think about here. Crushed coral in a mesh bag in the filter is *the* method of choice when you have fish, mostly because if makes changes to the water chemistry at a glacial pace, thus keeping things safer for the fish. But some members have reported it can take up to two weeks (!) before you see significant pH movement from adding crushed coral. Now rabbut, I haven't heard you report that, so maybe you've experienced differently? I was just worried about that slowness if its true.

Meanwhile, bicarb (Baking soda that is (I always worry a bit about some baking powder products having extra other stuff in so I steer clear of baking powder in recommendations) definately does not have the slowness problem, as its almost instantaneous. But bicarb has a different problem in that it doesn't last as long, but then, that depends on how much you put in too. I would tend to be more conservative in the amount of bicarb I poured in but would probably not drop all the way back to half of what rabbut recommends.. I'd be at about 3/4 of what he recommends.

Actually, baking soda must be quite cheap, so probably a quite trip to the grocery and perhaps they sell it in big boxes... and yes, I'd put it in on the tail end of a water change.

ok, so now I've been my typical super-slow and have the advantage of seeing rabbuts and BTTs further comments and actually what I'd do considering that is to do BOTH, hoping that the bicarb would be fast acting to get your fishless cycling going fast but then also to go ahead and be getting crushed coral and perhaps the other things mentioned going so that they can start wearing themselves down a bit as they'll work better after they've been in a little bit, so even though you will be "throwing out the water" it won't be wasted but instead the hardening aspect of your Mbuna tank will be getting up to speed, hopefully. (assuming the others think this sounds ok too)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[backtotropical]

I'd agree with that, Waterdrop.

Fishheart needs a quick fix at the moment to get the cycle progressing as soon and quickly as possible. Bi-carb will provide this. He (I assume it's he?) also needs a long-term solution for after the cycle which can be provided by the coral substrate, calcium / lime based rocks and even crushed coral in the filter too.

In this case where both short-term and long-term solutions are required, a mixture of both methods would be best.

I'd suggest using the coral / rock etc to decorate the tank, and then use Bi-carb to make up any shortfall in the short-term.

Cheers

BTT

 

[waterdrop]

Great, glad you agree BTT! I'd think it easiest to grab the bicarb at the grocery and that could get going faster, while it may take a bit longer to find the bagged crushed coral at the LFS and or other decorations etc. and so they could be added later. (Of couse LFHeart might have the LFS next door, and the grocery miles away, )

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Lord Fishheart]

Great, glad you agree BTT! I'd think it easiest to grab the bicarb at the grocery and that could get going faster, while it may take a bit longer to find the bagged crushed coral at the LFS and or other decorations etc. and so they could be added later. (Of couse LFHeart might have the LFS next door, and the grocery miles away, )

~~waterdrop~~

Hi, i already have Bicarb of Soda, what should I be aiming for PH wise to get it up and running again?