First Fishless Cycle..

[Tag2008]

Well thanks to you all for your comments in this thread , its been so helpfull to me..

Id never tried a fishless cycle b4 and wanted to not loose fishs and go through a stage of stresing and killing my pilot fish's..

I got 6 little Dwarf Flag Chiclids yesterday after a huge water change... In fact I did 2 changes one after the other as my nitrates went Off the scale once I did a 75% change... this threw me as they had shown very low all week and as soon as a do a water change they are sky high!!!

My only conclusion was after near 2 weeks of ammonia cycling they had built up so high my test kit couldnt read them? and when I diluted them with a big waterchange they became readable? Well this was my only conclusion so did a second change and all went back to normal....

Added the fish a few hours later once the temp was up for them and they seem fine so far....

Thank you all once again..

 

[Miss Wiggle]

sounds like a sensible conclusion....... get some pics of the tank for us if you can

 

[waterdrop]

Hey MW,

You know, reading Tag's comment makes me think of some times when I've done a large water change only to find that nitrates are still quite high. Now it may be that I'm remember times when I measured too soon after things were stirred up but I still have this nagging thought that somehow nitrate almost seems to "hang out and hide down in the cannister filter" or some such ... (probably a nonsense thought!) ...

Have you (or anyone else of course) experienced any thoughts like this about nitrate??

~~waterdrop~~
edit: ps. by "quite high" I mean higher than I thought they'd be following the large water change, which I would usually think would almost completely get rid of them, considering my tap water has never had any nitrates when measured. And by "large water change" I'm still talking about water in the gravel and cannister filter still being there...

 

[Tag2008]

sounds like a sensible conclusion....... get some pics of the tank for us if you can

Hey MW

Its in my signature called Main Tank..

Hey MW,

You know, reading Tag's comment makes me think of some times when I've done a large water change only to find that nitrates are still quite high. Now it may be that I'm remember times when I measured too soon after things were stirred up but I still have this nagging thought that somehow nitrate almost seems to "hang out and hide down in the cannister filter" or some such ... (probably a nonsense thought!) ...

Have you (or anyone else of course) experienced any thoughts like this about nitrate??

~~waterdrop~~
edit: ps. by "quite high" I mean higher than I thought they'd be following the large water change, which I would usually think would almost completely get rid of them, considering my tap water has never had any nitrates when measured. And by "large water change" I'm still talking about water in the gravel and cannister filter still being there...

Hi WD,
My nitrates were off the scale after the 75% water change so much I rushed out and bought a new test kit as I didnt believe what i was seeing so now have 3 nitrate kits lol....

 

[waterdrop]

Oh cool, would be interested in any comparisons of your 3 nitrate kits.

 

[Tag2008]

Oh cool, would be interested in any comparisons of your 3 nitrate kits.

Hey WD..

Well My First Kit was Tests strips and they gave an accurate reaading believe it or not but I never used them initially as id given up on test strips under advisment..

Tetra 5 in 1 kit gave off the scale readinga in NO2 & no3

API Mater Kit Liquid test gave wrong low readings(Yellowish colour) as you see in this thread untill I did the 75% change when it then went off the scale (Deep red) and matched what the other 2 kits were reading.

Nutrafin Kit also liquid test was the one i went out to buy after getting huge readings after the change and confirmed the test strip readings I got.(Deep Purple)

All 3 kits now give the same readings basically and the 6 wee flags seem fine so far...

Now all I need is to find somewhere to get a nice pair of gold severums....Cant get them locally

 

[waterdrop]

ok, gotcha tag, thanks for posting.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

the problem is more to do with the quality and accuracy of our nitrate test kits IMHO. As Andywg ceaselessly reminds us he took a sample of water and did two tests with the API kit, I can't remember the exact readings but one came out low, probably around 10ppm, the other came out off the scale at 200ppm.

Nitrate readings are indicative at best, when you're getting random readings it's almost always a case of dodgy readings rather than anything more complex.