Cycling Queries Please Help!

[vanderdraay]

hi i am into my 2nd week of fishless cycling my tank and ive just been doing my ammonia nitrite and nitrate tests i know the nitrite and nitrate dont need to be checked at this stage but i like to know whats going on and ive found my nitrate is at 110mg/l and nitrite is at 0.8 mg/l whilst my ammonia is still between 2.4 and 4.9 mg/l
my tank is a 100g tank, temp is at 28 c ,i applied 24 mil of ammonia on the 19th to bring it up to 5ppm as advised by the calculator.
checked my ph at 7.5 aswell
i also added 1/2 of my mature media into the tanks new filter
i'm now wondering why ive got these sort of readings from nitrite and nitrate when i am only 1 week into the cycle ,is this right or have i messed something up please help



many thanks

paul

 

[FishyWishie]

The mature media will have given your tank a massive headstart in converting ammonia into nitrite and then into Nitrate. It may well be worth doing a fairly large waterchange to get those nitrates back down as I believe very high nitrate levels can cause your cycle to slow down or stall entirely.

 

[vanderdraay]

il do a 50% water change later and see how things go from there .would i have to put ammonia back in again to get it back to 5ppm ?

paul

 

[Twinklecaz]

Yeah it looks like you're quite far along. Do the water change and see what happens.

Don't let the media dry out though(you probably know that)!

and yeah probably. Test a little while after the W/C and then adjust accordingly. It might not need to be 5ppm though.

WD or someone will know

 

[vanderdraay]

yes twinklecaz ive read the cycle does and donts lol,i was a bit puzzled about the readings i was getting so early on though and wanted a few views from everyone here just to reassure me really

many thanks

Paul

 

[waterdrop]

Not enough info to judge really, without a log. Its seeing the data over days that helps. WD

 

[vanderdraay]

unfortunately i havent been writing a log sorry but have been constantly checking every day all the tests,the first 5 days i didnt have any readings then the ammonia started to drop slowly and both nitrite and nitrate readings changed as the ammonia reduced i added 2ppm in last night to bring it back to 5 ppm and its now back to 0ppm and nitrate is up to 110mg/l nitrite was at 3.3mg/l will recheck things later and do a 90% waterchange and put 5ppm back in to retest after .are these readings correct ive double checked them all and their consistent also ph is 7.5

 

[vanderdraay]

ive done another test this morning a=0 ni=.8 na=110 at 11am 12hours after redosing and water change to drop the nitrates is this right or should i leave the water changes even if nitrates are high ?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, your MM Fishless Cycle sounds textbook. Don't forget that water changing is a way to remove ammonia and nitrite and nitrate, so for a while after water changing, your tests results may be more attributable to that than to the size of your bacterial colonies! But you sound pretty far along in the process, because of the mature media. You should be testing at 12 and 24 hours and dosing at the 24 hour mark, if ammonia went to zero sometime within the previous 24 hours.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[vanderdraay]

i did a 90% water change at 7pm last night so it had 4 hours to settle and circulate when i did my test at 11pm would that have been long enough or should i have left it over night to test at the 12 hour point?

 

[waterdrop]

To get a "baseline" set of tests after a water change and recharge of the ammonia dose, you usually only need to wait about an hour after the dosing (assuming your filters are giving you about a 4 or 5x turnover rate, they'd have mixed the water completely through 4 or 5 times.) This would tell you if the number of milliliters of ammonia you dosed had given you a reasonable 4ppm, 5ppm or so concentration. (Usually the ammonia calculator is right but of course you can't just completely rely on them because the concentration of the original ammonia will be unknown/estimated.)

The feedback from the tests is more reliable and understandable if you try to have a fairly fixed dosing hour (1 particular hour out of the 24 hour day) and (if the previous dose has been reduced to zero ppm) re-dose at that hour. Let's say you dosed at 8pm in the evening. Then at 8am in the morning, you run a set of tests. Since you are pretty far along with your fishless cycle, this "12-hour" test is the one you'll be currently most interested in! Once this one shows zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite, you can begin your "qualifying week" which is just where you keep repeating all this for a week and see if the filter can always drop the 5ppm dose to zero ppm within 12 hours each day. If if has a spike of either ammonia or nitrite, even for one day, then it has failed the qualification and the week starts over again. A filter that "qualifies" rarely comes back to spike on you after you get the new fish in there.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[vanderdraay]

cheers for that WD i needed it in laymans terms lol il be checking everything as said and hopefully it wont be to long thanks for all the info and great help

many thanks

Paul

 

[waterdrop]

Don't forget to communicate with the members if there are changes. WD