Decision On Nitrite Spike...

[DJ_$ure$hot]

Now Im stuck between a rock & a hard place on a decision. I have now had my nitrite spike for exactly a week. I knows the correct word for this is impatience, but Im so keen on getting some new fish in my tank! How much longer do you think this spike will last? If its still going to take a while, I can do a swap with Bastables (NZ represent) for some of his mature JBL sintomech media for 1 ltr worth of new media (quite expensive). Shall I keep waiting & just be patient? Someone please reassure me that it wont to much longer now...

 

[Miss Wiggle]

patience is a virtue in fishkeeping!!!!

I know cycling is frustrating and you just wanna get fish now, but you need to look at the bigger picture. If you get into this hobby you'll have fish for the next 10+ years, maybe even the rest of your life. Waiting 1/2 weeks more to make sure the cycle is finished will make your first experiences of fishkeeping much better and you'll soon forget about the few weeks cycling. In fact your cycle is actually going at a reasonable speed, not super quick but believe me I've seen cycles take a LOT longer than this.

However that being said there are benefits to getting some mature media, when you get this it'll be an established colony as opposed to a newly cycled one, the chances of having a little mini cycle once you've got fish in are much less than with newly cycled media (not often, but sometimes, you see a little blip after adding fish). But to balance that risk out you take a chance putting anything from someone else's tank into yours. No offence to whoever your getting the media from, however any transfer carries risk of spreading disease.

Has the nitrite actually dropped down to 0 yet? If so how long did it take to do it? Have a read of the post 'when is a cycle finished' in the scientific section for some more info on this.

 

[dave_paton]

do you have any fish in there at the moment??
my nitrite is also spiking i have done water changes for the last 5 days in a row... it halfs each time i do a water change but sure enough when i get home from work it has gone back to 1ppm again. i had a thread on it the other day and miss wiggle and one of the other guys said its just a part of the cycle and to keep up my water changes.


"really there's no way of measuring the time it'll take, there's so many variables that affect it that we've no way of predicting it. Just keep up the daily water changes and you'll get there." ---- miss wiggle's quote on my thread

good luck

 

[DJ_$ure$hot]

Has the nitrite actually dropped down to 0 yet? If so how long did it take to do it? Have a read of the post 'when is a cycle finished' in the scientific section for some more info on this.

Nope, not yet. Still getting readings of about 0.50ppm everyday. Also continuing with 25% water changes everyday as well. By the way, I bought some awesome NEW dark substrate for my tank today

 

[Miss Wiggle]

def too early then, you'll find at some point it'll drop to 0, but not in the 12 hrs so maybe 17hrs or whatever, if it kind of sticks at that point and won't come down any faster then you can risk stocking it, however until it's dropped down to 0 for the first time you really shouldn't be adding fish.

substrate sounds good, get some pics up if you can

 

[waterdrop]

Has the nitrite actually dropped down to 0 yet? If so how long did it take to do it? Have a read of the post 'when is a cycle finished' in the scientific section for some more info on this.

Nope, not yet. Still getting readings of about 0.50ppm everyday. Also continuing with 25% water changes everyday as well. By the way, I bought some awesome NEW dark substrate for my tank today

That's the spirit! Take your mind off the waiting. At least you are not having to labor through water changes multiple times a day, like the fish-in cyclers, right? Dwell on the advantages of what you are doing and use the time to plan your stocking and learn more and more.

Is your dark substrate a plain gravel or sand? If it is a special substrate for plants, you might want to find out if it can have and effect on your pH, as sometimes that takes people by surprise.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[DJ_$ure$hot]

Is your dark substrate a plain gravel or sand? If it is a special substrate for plants, you might want to find out if it can have and effect on your pH, as sometimes that takes people by surprise.

~~waterdrop~~

Its a gravel. But thats what leads me onto my next question. They had a size grading of small or large. The large one is what I chose & I was wandering if my plants would still be able to grow their roots in the larger grade? Or was I better off going with the smaller size? I can still take it back & swap it

 

[Miss Wiggle]

in general the plants will be able to spread their roots through a range of sizes of gravel with relative ease. with smaller sizes of gravel they carry less weight so the plants roots can move them out of the way but with larger sizes of gravel there are more gaps and openings between the individual stones so roots can work through that way. It ends up being pretty equal both ways. If you wanted to be really plant friendly there are a number of fertilised substrates which you can get hold of or you can go for sand which is easy for plants to root into.