Cycling Will Be The Death Of Me

[BlueBlenny]

I had a fully cycled 10 gallon last year with four platies. Everything was fine until they had babies, and the breeder net I was keeping a few of the fry in was crowding the tank, so I upgraded to a 20G. I thought that adding some of the 10G gravel, decorations, and the bio filter would help me cycle the new tank, but it's been almost two weeks and I'm still getting the SAME readings as day one. UGH.

My seachem ammonia reads zero free ammonia and 1.0 total ammonia; API nitrite is .5; API nitrate is 5.0. Nothing changes, despite 15-20% water changes every other day. To make it worse, I've had the dreaded bacterial bloom for over a week now. My poor fish! When I switched to the 20G, I also got a bristlenose pleco, thinking the cycle would be no problem. He seems fine, but I don't want to stress him out.

Any advice? I feel like this is never going to happen!

Thanks...

 

[waterdrop]

So the bristlenose is the only addition to the four platies and the fry?

A given biofilter, given enough time, will match its capacity to a given stocking of fish (assuming its ultimate capacity is not yet exceeded of course) and then whenever the stocking is increased, the filter will go through some sort of mini-cycle (visible with our tests or not) until the bacteria build more biofilm structure and colony size. Moving the same stocking and filter over to a larger tank should not theoretically place any additional load on the filter. Adding new stock simultaneous with a move is not advisable, as you now know, but still, shouldn't have been too bad with just one added fish.

You did move the fish and filter at the same time, right? You wouldn't want the filter bacteria to go unfed for too long of course. Was the filter media disturbed in some way by the move? Was the water environment consistent in temperature etc.?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BlueBlenny]

So the bristlenose is the only addition to the four platies and the fry?

A given biofilter, given enough time, will match its capacity to a given stocking of fish (assuming its ultimate capacity is not yet exceeded of course) and then whenever the stocking is increased, the filter will go through some sort of mini-cycle (visible with our tests or not) until the bacteria build more biofilm structure and colony size. Moving the same stocking and filter over to a larger tank should not theoretically place any additional load on the filter. Adding new stock simultaneous with a move is not advisable, as you now know, but still, shouldn't have been too bad with just one added fish.

You did move the fish and filter at the same time, right? You wouldn't want the filter bacteria to go unfed for too long of course. Was the filter media disturbed in some way by the move? Was the water environment consistent in temperature etc.?

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks, Waterdrop. Yes, the BN is the only new addition. I guess it's going through another cycle because of him.

I moved the fish and filter media at the same time. The media was a spongy foam from a Whisper 20, which I put in the extra slot on the new Penguin 150. Perhaps it just didn't have enough bacteria on it to cover everything. And I only moved over a cup of old gravel, as I didn't like it. That might've been a mistake.

In your experience, when you're cycling, should you avoid vacuuming the gravel? I was wondering if that removes much of the beneficial bacteria....