Cycle Slowed Down..

[Tag2008]

Tag,

If I've glanced back and got this correct (its difficult as your base data is tricky to find in this thread) the you washed all the media in tap water 4 days ago? So you are clearly still in the early first phase waiting for the A-Bacs to process ammonia (whatever you put in 4ppm, whatever) down to zero and its probably not going down withing 24 hours yet, right? (sorry if you already told us, just couldln't find it when I looked back over the thread.)

Anyway, by way of answering your question about baking soda, if you are still in the first phase then you don't really want to disturb things as much with water changes yet. The baking soda will not make you have to do any more water changes than without it. It will be gone quite enough with the final 90% water change before adding fish (you, of course, do not use it after you get fish) and it won't have any residual effects, so its not to worry about.

In the second phase of fishless cycling, after ammonia is dropping to zero in 24 hours and the nitrite has "spiked" way up high, we have been feeling that water changes (on the weekend for instance) seem to be a good thing for several reasons. Most importantly it removes some of the nitrite (NO2) so that your nitrite test may be able to show you some movement. It removes the large amounts of nitrate (NO3) that are building up. Because it is a gravel clean, it removes extra debris which just "muddies"(lol) the testing picture. Removing the excess nitrites may be good for the N-Bac growth (per Hovanec). Also, in my opinion, beginning to gravel vac and water change at this point without fish allows you, if you are a beginner, to practice the real thing and get all your buckets and habits going and worked out before having fish.

So, when you DO do these water changes later on in the 2nd phase, you will need to remember several things when you put the fresh tap water back in. It needs to be properly conditioned for chlorine/chloramine of course, it probably doesn't need any temp matching but I always did rough temp matching anyway (anything to keep my bacteria cooking along!), then you need to always remember to top your ammonia back up and top your baking soda back up. Its not that these things are hard, its just easy to plain old forget!

~~waterdrop~~

Hi WD,
Thanks for that...
Yes this tank started out OK then the test readings went to pot!!!

Im in no rush to get fish in this tank so decided to try and figure out where all the high readings were comming from as you read they were just not right so decided to start from scaratch and clean everything down as i was worried I had a contamination of some kind.. the tank had been in storage for around a year maybe more and gave it a clean up before i started but just didnt know what was going on...

So anyway we seem back o track but as the post stated my PH was crashing and I now seem to have this under control with the bakung soda and im now on to my 3rd dose of ammona in the morning as tonights readings have put the ammonia at 0 after 12 hours..

Nitrate and nitrite are realy high so im guessing my Nitrite eating bacs are growing..
PH dropped a little so topped it up again with some more soda...

Tommorrow evening should tell me if in using up the ammonia in 12 hour intervals... looking good so far but looks like i need the soda.

Once im cycled will this tank keep having PH problems or is this just the cycle being hard on it?

Regards as ever
Tag

 

[waterdrop]

You should treat the KH/pH question as a whole different thing after you have fish than any of the things we do about it during fishless cycling. Once you have cycled and want to maintain a stable tank with fish over a long time, it is much, much better to be able to do this working from your baseline tap water. It should only be a very rare situation that drives a fishkeeper to attempt to change what the tap water is and then maintain that change. And even if it turns out you are one of those rare people, the changes are done in different ways from baking soda.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tag2008]

You should treat the KH/pH question as a whole different thing after you have fish than any of the things we do about it during fishless cycling. Once you have cycled and want to maintain a stable tank with fish over a long time, it is much, much better to be able to do this working from your baseline tap water. It should only be a very rare situation that drives a fishkeeper to attempt to change what the tap water is and then maintain that change. And even if it turns out you are one of those rare people, the changes are done in different ways from baking soda.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks WD...

Ive progressed a little further and am eating ammonia in 12 hours at a time now but still needing to add a little soda.. so seems im in control again..

So now seeing whats happening with my PH / kh in this tank in this fishless cycle would this explain the deaths I had with my "pilot mollys" I origionally attempted to do a fish in cycle with? I had 6 mollys at first and got them in 2 lots . some died within 24 hours with no symtoms the rest within the next few days...

Would my PH / KH have crashed like this when i attempted a fish in cycle too?

Regards as ever
Tag

 

[Tag2008]

Well here is the story so far..

My tanks using up ammonia and within 12 hrs each time without fail...

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0.50
Nitrates: Off The Scale

Its been like this for the last 7 days roughly and each test reading has been the same..

Im wondering why my Nitrite hasnt started to go down? or why hasnt it risin with each time ammonia has been added? or is it eating a little amount and not enough for me to notice yet?

Im still putting in Baking soda to keep my PH up every other day.

Any thoughts appreciated...

Regards
Tag

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Tag,

Was just looking over your thread again and seems your fishless cycle in the little tank is progressing fairly normally. Seems like you re-started this fishless cycle on July 25, so are only about 8 days into it if I read correctly. You say that after you add 4-5ppm ammonia it will drop to zero ppm at about 12 hours I believe. If so then that is good. I hope you then wait and only add ammonia again after its been 24 hours from the last time you added ammonia, right? Don't know whether its your habit to add ammonia in the morning or evening for for instance if you added ammonia at 8am in the morning then you could test at 8pm and hope to find ammonia had dropped to zero, then the next morning at 8am you would add enough ammonia to put the level back up to 4-5ppm again, right?

At this stage of only 8 days I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to interpret what nitrite is doing. At the stage where the A-Bacs are dropping ammonia pretty well, but the nitrite has not spiked way up yet, I found the nitrite readings to be kind of unpredictable and jumping around. It took a while before the nitrite test was giving a high reading every day.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tag2008]

Hi Tag,

Was just looking over your thread again and seems your fishless cycle in the little tank is progressing fairly normally. Seems like you re-started this fishless cycle on July 25, so are only about 8 days into it if I read correctly. You say that after you add 4-5ppm ammonia it will drop to zero ppm at about 12 hours I believe. If so then that is good. I hope you then wait and only add ammonia again after its been 24 hours from the last time you added ammonia, right? Don't know whether its your habit to add ammonia in the morning or evening for for instance if you added ammonia at 8am in the morning then you could test at 8pm and hope to find ammonia had dropped to zero, then the next morning at 8am you would add enough ammonia to put the level back up to 4-5ppm again, right?

At this stage of only 8 days I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to interpret what nitrite is doing. At the stage where the A-Bacs are dropping ammonia pretty well, but the nitrite has not spiked way up yet, I found the nitrite readings to be kind of unpredictable and jumping around. It took a while before the nitrite test was giving a high reading every day.

~~waterdrop~~

Hey WD..

Yes you have read me properly,

We add ammonia only in 24 hour intervals and generally in the morning and we do readings every 12 hours from the time of adding ammonia... so we test twice in 24 hours but only add ammonia once over the same period..

My ammonia was actually munched in under 12 hours the other day as i tested too early but wanted to see for curiosity and it was zero after 10 hours.. so I think the ammonia munching bacs are fine..

I did recall you said earlier perhaps a water change at stage 2 would be benificial to get better N02 and N03 readings but as you say its still early days to be seeing any spikes so i will just plod on and watch...

As ever I appreciate your comments..

 

[waterdrop]

Although, since you are getting it done in 10 hours on the ammonia that should mean you are very close and since the nitrAtes are continuing to get very high then the nitrite spike is to be expected to be seen soon, hopefully.

Its a hard call about the water change - I sometimes got the feeling that it felt better to just let things sit and go along rather than disturb (ie. almost that the bacteria liked the environment being left alone for a bit rather than being all churned up..) but with at some point pretty soon its going to be good to get those nitrates out of there with a water change and once the nitrites spike then weekend water changes and recharges will be a good thing I think.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tag2008]

Although, since you are getting it done in 10 hours on the ammonia that should mean you are very close and since the nitrAtes are continuing to get very high then the nitrite spike is to be expected to be seen soon, hopefully.

Its a hard call about the water change - I sometimes got the feeling that it felt better to just let things sit and go along rather than disturb (ie. almost that the bacteria liked the environment being left alone for a bit rather than being all churned up..) but with at some point pretty soon its going to be good to get those nitrates out of there with a water change and once the nitrites spike then weekend water changes and recharges will be a good thing I think.

~~waterdrop~~

Thank you...
I will just keep this going as it is as i messed so much in the beginning I will just wait and see and if its still not changing will report back for some thoughts...

Thanks again..

 

[waterdrop]

Your welcome! Good luck Tag,

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tag2008]

Hi again

This mornings test were good, Over the past few days the nitrite levels were rising going a deeper purple colour in the testube and this morning they were a light blue!!

This is what we have been waiting for so did a second test to double check and it was the same..So were on track now.

My Ph has stayed more stable this last few days so Im wondering if this has to do with the new bacteria starting to eat?

I havent looked at the NitrAte as yet as im sure it will be sky high.

I did make one small change 2 days ago and that was to turn the heat up a little as it seemed to be a little cool so its at about 29 now.

Im thinking if this keeps up to the weekend I should be good to go for a waterchange at the weekend and be able to use the tank? That being the case this will have completed in around 2 weeks give or take a day or 2.

Thoughts appreciated..

 

[waterdrop]

Exactly the right idea Tag, its important to keep adding ammonia for the better part of a week after you think its cycled just to see whether it was a false indication. Sometimes they will fall back into a pattern of not being cycled yet. All the signs sound good for you though, so congratulations!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Tag2008]

Exactly the right idea Tag, its important to keep adding ammonia for the better part of a week after you think its cycled just to see whether it was a false indication. Sometimes they will fall back into a pattern of not being cycled yet. All the signs sound good for you though, so congratulations!

~~waterdrop~~

Thank You,
Couldnt have done it without you guys.