Cycling Advice Needed (Pls Help)

[waterdrop]

The A-Bacs process each 1ppm of ammonia into 2.7ppm of nitrite(NO2), so a lot more N-Bacs have to grow to look like they're accomplishing the same thing as the A-Bacs are. WD

 

[chris30uk]

oh i see, so in any established filter there are nearly 3 times the amount of N Bacs than A Bacs. umm i didn't know that WD. so that must mean that my N Bacs have been fairly well established from early on as my nitrites have stayed pretty low all through my cycle up to now. Cheers WD you know your stuff and its much appreciated.

thanks

Chris

 

[chris30uk]

day 13: Ammonia 0, nitrites risen to 5ppm, nitrates quite high and pH the same (re dosed ammonia to 4ppm). Do i just leave alone at this point? what happens when nitrites go above 5ppm as the chart only goes up to 5? im not sure if i just wait until nitrites return to a readable ppm? help lol

thanks

Chris

 

[waterdrop]

You are in the nitrite spike stage of fishless cycling. You just go steadily along, logging your test results in your aquarium notebook and here in your thread if you do that. One little tweek that OM and I like to try is to lower the dosing down to, say, 3ppm, during the nitrite spike stage, so that not as much overall nitrate will ultimately get produced.

You are correct. The nitrate(NO3) will indeed go higher than the 5ppm limit of the test, but that's ok, all you really care about is that you are still "in" the nitrite spike stage. Sometimes this stage seems to take forever but eventually, one day, the nitrite spike will suddenly drop off (and I mean suddenly - sometimes it drops to zero in a single day.) That will usually mean that nitrite will be processed to zero ppm within 24 hours after dosing from then on and the number of hours it will take will slowly go down.

At that point you have moved into the 3rd stage of fishless cycling and watching to see when nitrite can be cleared within 12 hours of dosing becomes basically your main goal. As you get closer to that goal you raise your dosing back up to 5ppm to maximize the size of your bacterial colonies by the end. You only ever dose once per 24 hours, even once you start testing at 12 hours to see your 12-hour results.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[chris30uk]

Day 15 test results:

Ammonia - 0

Nitrites - 5

pH - 8

Nitrates - not tested


hi guys i was wondering. iv read people saying that you can have a seeded tank cycled in one week if done rite, is this possible? the reason im asking is in 8-12 days my fish will be arriving and im a little worried now. i ordered them as soon as i knew i was getting my tank but didnt fully understand cycling until i found this forum. the fish will be about 2 inches long and im getting 25. do you think im heading for disaster here?

 

[waterdrop]

Coincidentally there is another guy with a current thread who got in 31 fish mail order before understanding about fishless cycling and he's had to swich over to fish-in cycling and mobilize the family for round-the-clock water changing (more or less I think.)

I mean, there's not much you can do is my guess. The fish can't be sent back as that would be double-transit time and would probably kill them, so they're bound to have a better chance with you. Its unlikely you're going to happen to personally know a local shop that would take a bunch of fish temporarily or a friend or something, although you'd want to try that if you did.

So you're probably going to have to do the complete water change to get rid of the ammonia and then proceed with a Fish-In Cycling Situation once they get here. Its unlikely your tank will even be out of the nitrite spike stage by that time but we can hope of course.

Are you thinking of trying to find mature media or am I forgetting that you already have it? Actual insertion of significant amounts of mature media into the correct position of your filter is of course the very best chance you get at successful cloning. Using the new tank as a cleaning bucket for old filters that you can get access to can also be an additional help (eg. squeezing a mature sponge directly in your tank water so that the new filter will suck up the debris.) In practice, its unpredictable how much these things will speed up a cycle but in the best cases it can indeed reduce the worst of it to a week, perhaps 2 weeks overall (and of course anything like this will be a help to your situation.)

~~waterdrop~~
edit: forgot to add - there may be a few tricks to help with a large introduction of fish to a fish-in cycling situation, so the members will help and I'll try to check back. WD

 

[chris30uk]

i really appreciate your time WD. yes the filter has been seeded with gravel and filter gunk. a question: my filter has 3 trays for media but i didnt have enough ceramic rings to fill the one of the large baskets to even half way. today i bought more ceramic rings so i could fill the first basket fully and theres enough to fill one of the others too. do you think this will help at this stage?

thank you

Chris

 

[chris30uk]

anyone?

 

[chris30uk]

ok i missed day 16 but i did check ammonia and it was 0 so i re dosed 4ppm. im a bit confused at my test results regarding nitrate. today's tests are:

Ammonia - 0

nitrite - 2 - 3

nitrate - 15 - 20 (iv done no water changes?)

pH 7.6 (added a small spoon of bicarb)


ok so my ammonia keeps going to 0 but will do my first 12 hour test in the morning. my nitrite has been at he top end of the scale at 5ppm for a while now but seems to be lowering. now i did two tests on the nitrate and got different colours on both tests. i did a further two tests but realy shook the bottles and the test tubes in between and after adding the chemicals. the last two showed 15 - 20ppm of nitrate? does bicarb change test results? im concerned about it suddenly being lower than 3-4 days ago. maybe its time to invest in a new api kit? give me some feedback guys as im not sure what i should do here.

let me know

thanks

Chris

 

[OldMan47]

Bicarb does not change the test results at all Chris. You are well on your way to having a minimally cycled filter right now.

 

[chris30uk]

Hi thanks OM i hope so. Im still mystified about my nitrates lowering, any ideas? Could be faulty test im not sure. I didn't test for nitrates. Today's test results:

Ammonia - 0 (roughly after 12-13 hours)

Nitrite - 2-3

pH - 7.4

Ammonia cycle is getting faster now, nitrites are slowly lowering a the colour is defiantly going lighter. The pH is slowly lowering?
Any thoughts or advice much appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

 

[chris30uk]

Today's results:

Ammonia - 0 (in 12 hours or less)

Nitrite - 2-3

Nitrate - not tested

pH - 8.4

Ok so the ammonia is cycling in 12 hours and possibly less. My nitrites seem to be staying the same for now. For some reason the pH has jumped from 7.4 to 8.4 in 24 hours buti did add a small spoon of bicarb yesterday so maybe its that alone. I will test for nitrates tomorrow. Anyone like to add anything? Feeling a little bit abandoned on my thread now, any advice welcomed.

thanks
Chris

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Chris, just back from "holiday" and on looking in, it looks like you're still in the nitrite spike stage, as expected. Nitrate tests are notoriously unpredictable so when they confirm things for us we take it as good and when they don't seem right we just ignore them ..well, they get better and more reliable after you have fish and the tank is more stable.. and they become a more valuable test later anyway. For now, its more the ammonia and nitrite and pH we care about, speaking of which, yes, it was probably the bicarb that took your pH up, that is what we expect it to do.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[chris30uk]

Hi WD, nice to hear from you. Today's tests seem much more normal but its crazy how the tests went all weird. Anyhow heres tonight's results on day 20:

Ammonia 0 (12hours or less)

Nitrite 2-3

Nitrate 120-140

pH 7.6

i re dosed less ammonia tonight as common sense tells me the A bacs are ready but the N bacs are not. So 3ppm ammonia tonight which should keep my A bacs alive but produce less nitrites as i dont want to overwhelm the N bacs with high nitrites which might slow down their progress (does this sound about rite?).


As you can see, tonight's tests show a completely different water. A bacs are ready to go but the N bacs are still not ready yet. The nitrates are looking high again as i would expect and my pH seems to have dropped. I just don't understand why my nitrates went from 100+ then for a good few days they showed low 15-20ppm. Also my pH was holding at 8.0 after the bicarb fix for a while then suddenly dropped to 7.2. At that point i dosed a small tablespoon of bicarb to raise it then in 24 hours it shot up to 8.4. Today its back down to 7.6? Either the water is changing over night, something is upsetting the tests or my tests are faulty. It could be me doing something wrong when testing, but im very careful (i try to be). Let me know what you think. i appreciate your time WD and OM as no one else bothers.

thanks
Chris

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Chris,

Its quite normal in the years I've been watching cases now for the whole process to be quite topsy-turvy when you look at it from the day-to-day standpoint. It can seem just wild and yet that's often what we see. What we also see is that despite all sorts of crazy looking intermediate results, nearly all the fishless cycles eventually come together with a successful biofilter in the end. We have time on our side if we just wait it all out.

Let's take your pH as an example. We all tend to try to think of processes as straight-line steady sloping graphs if we are not given any other information. When told that the cycling process can cause pH to drop we tend to think of a steady drop. In fact, that's not the case. If we were to measure KH (Carbonate Hardness) we would see a more steady dropping, but pH will wait and wait and then drop suddenly. The reason is that a given KH level represents a concentration of buffer in the water. The nitric acid being produced at the end of cycling is steadily using up that buffer (thus KH steadily would decrease) and when at some point there is no longer enough buffer to absorb the acid, the pH suddenly recognizes that the water has gone a lot more acid very suddenly. And that's just one example!

~~waterdrop~~