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Cycling Question

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chrisn20

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I set up my tank on 24th Feb and started the fishless cycle. I added the amonia and started taking readings. After a week the amonia level dropped to almost zero and so i started testing the nitrites. As expected the levels were off the chart for about 10 days but all of a sudden they dissappeared. I tested for nitrates and they too were off the chart so I thought everything was ok. I knew that i wouldn't be able to add fishes for a few days so continued adding the amonia every day to keep up the bacteria and it always dissappears by next morning BUT the nitrite and nitrate tests are now both reading zero.

What has happened to my tank, is it cycled, should I have any nitrates. I am now confused as to what to do next, I hope I dont have to start all over again as I was hoping to be able to add fishes during the Easter holidays next week.
 
few q's

what test kit are you using? have you done any water changes?

nitrate test kist are notoriously unreliable, the good thing being that nitrate is like the side effect of cycling so not something to be too concerned about.

if you add 5ppm of ammonia to your tank in the morning, then test it 12 hrs later, if ammonia and nitrite both test at 0 then the tank is cycled regardless of what nitrate reading you get.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I am using Nutrafin master test kit. I threw out the strips after reading about them on this forum.

Haven't done any water changes as yet.

I have been adding ammonia to 5ppm before I go to bed and in the morning the reading is nearly at zero.I just thought that you had to have nitrates.

The tank is quite well planted and the plants seem to be flourishing, just the occasional brown leaf on the anubias which I have been removing.

So do you think it would be safe to add some fishies at the weekend then?
 
the plants may be the key factor here, did you recently add them? (i.e. were they in place for all of the cycle or just start, did adding the plants coincide with the nitrate level dropping?)

plants will absorb both ammonia and nitrate, however their preference is for ammonia. so if you add ammonia to a heavily planted tank the plants will absorb some of it before it gets to the filter, the plants do not produce nitrate like the filter does. this is called 'silent cycling', it's basically when you don't actually cycle the tank, but use plants to filter the tank, they absorb the ammonia and consequently the tank is safe for fish life and no nitrate is produced. it's possible that this is what's hapopening here, however it would have to be very very heavily planted to have an impact where it takes all 5ppm of ammonia, can you post a pic so we can see if this is likley or not.

what's probably more likley is that the filter has cycled and the plants are absorbing the nitrate.

now you may think that ok as long as the tank is capable of consuming 5ppm of ammonia in 12 hrs then it's capable of supporting fishy life, to an extent that is correct, however if the filter's not cycled and something happens to the plants, say for an example the bulb goes on the tank and the plants can't get any light for a few days, the plants dying off would mean the tank can't deal with the ammonia level any more and the filter would immediatley start cycling risking the health of the fish. so IMO silent cycling is only good if you are confident in your ability to maintain the plant growth needed to support the fish. personally not a risk i would take.

good way to test this is to remove the plants from the tank then add ammonia, see if it's gone in 12 hrs, if it's gone then the filters doing the cycling, if it's not then the plants are. the plants will be fine in a bucket for 12 hrs. but post a pic up first, what's 'heavily planted' to one person is not to another so a pic will give an indication of if this is likley or not.
 
Hi again. Many thanks for your reply and for trying to help me.

The plants were in place before the cycling started, however I did add a few more but that was before the initial nitrite peak.

I have taken some photos but not sure how to go about posting them here but I wouldn't say it was 'heavily' planted. I wanted to see which plants worked for me and all of them have grown well since the start except for the camomba which seems to be disintigrating.

I added some more ammo this morning back to 5ppm and will test again later this evening. If it has all gone again I will have to consider taking out all the plants (reluctantly) and trying again overnight.

In the meantime I will have a look and see if I can figure out how to post a pic.

Thanks again.
 
tank looks good!!!!

but no that level of plants won't be impacting on cycling in any serious way. so yes you are cycled :good:

i always advise to keep adding your 5ppm of ammonia for a couple of days after cycling has finished, tank can be a little unstable at this time so just giving it a few days can help avert disaster. So keep adding your 5ppm then at the weekend do a big 90% water change and go get some fishies :good:
 
Many thanks. Will do as you suggest and keep adding the ammonia until day before I get fishies. Then the water change and will try and post some more pics when the fishes are in.

Thanks again
 
Update as of this morning.

Amonia and Nitrite are both reading zero, still no nitrates. Did a water change yesterday ready to add fishes today. Tested the water this morning before I go to fish store and all readings are the same except my ph has dropped to 5. (I hadn't previously tested this)

My normal tap water has ph of 7.

I do have 3 pieces of bogwood in the tank so would expect ph to drop slightly but would a level of 5 effect the fish I want to put in.

I have now decided to only get some more plants today and leave the fish for another week, I want to get it right before being responsible for fishie life.
 
I think a pH of 5 sounds too low for your tropical community tank.

The experts will be along to help but I think its more common to find a range somewhere between 6.8-7.8 or so. Since your tap water measures at about 7.0 it should be possible for you to be close to this once you have found and stabilized any variables in your tank that are pushing the pH away from 7. It is often recommended that you give the system an extra week of watching after you've acheived the "drop NH3 & NO2 to zero to 0ppm withing 10-12 hours" endpoint of fishless cycling. I could be that some article in the tank or lack of complete cycling is still driving pH changes.

Of course some individual fish found in the wild prefer pH at the more extreme edges of the range above but in general the advice I've heard is that tropical fish prefer a stable and rarely changing pH more than an ideal specific pH as long as the stable one is within this reasonable range.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Thats what I thought too. I have successfully kept tropical fish before in the same tank and never come across this problem before. This is the first time I have tried to do fishless cycling so I must have gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Not too sure where I go from here to be honest. Might have to strip everything down and start again but I think I will just wait and see if anyone else has any ideas first.
 
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