Fish-In Cycle- What Am I Doing Wrong?

[trianglekitty]

I'm on week eight or nine of a fish in cycle, and this is not working. For the last two weeks these are my daily levels (API Master Kit):

Ammonia .25-.5
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0

I do a 50% or more water change daily. My tap water stats are .25 Ammonia, 0 Nitrites, 0 Nitrates. This complicates things because even after a water change I can't go down lower than .25

Tank Stats

20 gallon
Live plants
10 guppies
78 F

I have an additional 5 gallon tank w/ one fish in that has been running for 5 months. This tank has the SAME stats, so even at 5 months I'm not cycled. I think I can put that one down to overcleaning, as I do a 25% or better water change daily on that one because of the size and gravel vac it daily, so maybe bacteria never had a chance to grow.

For the larger tank, could I be adding too much stress coat to the water? I empty about 3 buckets per change, and just add a cap full to each (so 30ml, when I should probably be using 10-15ml). Would this stop the cycle?

My LFS is telling me I shouldn't be changing the water at all and just to leave things be, but I know that would kill my fish. But I simply can't keep up daily water changes forever and I need to have some sense that an end is in sight.

 

[sinistral]

What kind of live plants do you have? You are using dechlorinator when you do water changes, right?

I think there may be a couple of ways to look at this. One way (and I hate to tell you, but I think your LFS is right) is that by changing the water daily you are diluting the ammonia concentration to the point where bacterial colonies never do grow in. Some fish *can* tolerate elevated levels of ammonia on a short term basis, although obviously this is not ideal and why fishless cycling is safer overall. If you've committed to a fish-in cycle, you're committed to exposing your fish to some ammonia. Check out the chart here http/fins.actwin.com/mirror/begin-cycling.html. This gives you a sense of what kinds of levels of ammonia your fish might be able to tolerate. I don't recall off the top of my head about guppies and their hardiness in particular.

The other factor is the plants. Plants can facilitate cycling (especially if they are fast growing and heavily planted) by taking up ammonia and nitrites.

 

[Gilli]

OK need to clarify a couple of things - one that you are using a dechlorinator on the water changes, and two that if you have cleaned your filter you only did this in the used tank water and not tap water?

If so then you are doing the right thing - you just have to keep on keeping on until you get the stats you want. I would try to only do a water change every couple of days instead of every day and see how it goes. You can even change that to every 3 days or so if your ammonia levels dont rise - it will give the bacteria a little more to work on to build up, but you will have to test your water every day to keep an eye on things and if the ammonia starts to rise then do a water change. I had the same problem and was told not to change my water at all to let the ammonia build up , but I would rather my fish didnt suffer and it took longer than have it cycle quicker and lose fish. I know it seems like forever but you will get there!

This is a good reason why not to do a fish in cycle other than obviously for the welfare for the fish - its a pain in the backside! Some tanks just take longer to cycle than other im afraid!

 

[trianglekitty]

What kind of live plants do you have? You are using dechlorinator when you do water changes, right?

I think there may be a couple of ways to look at this. One way (and I hate to tell you, but I think your LFS is right) is that by changing the water daily you are diluting the ammonia concentration to the point where bacterial colonies never do grow in. Some fish *can* tolerate elevated levels of ammonia on a short term basis, although obviously this is not ideal and why fishless cycling is safer overall. If you've committed to a fish-in cycle, you're committed to exposing your fish to some ammonia. Check out the chart here http/fins.actwin.com/mirror/begin-cycling.html. This gives you a sense of what kinds of levels of ammonia your fish might be able to tolerate. I don't recall off the top of my head about guppies and their hardiness in particular.

The other factor is the plants. Plants can facilitate cycling (especially if they are fast growing and heavily planted) by taking up ammonia and nitrites.

I'm not sure what kind of plants, honestly- they come from Petsmart in sealed containers. I'm afraid I just really picked what looked nice without much care (I would not do this again, as I've been doing more research into planted tanks). There's about twenty or so small to medium broad leafed plants.

I do treat the tap water- stress coat is a dechlorinator. I'm just wondering if you can over do with the dechlorinator.

Unfortunately, I don't believe guppies are hardy. I'm really afraid of killing these guys! With ten in there, you would think they'd make enough waste for the bacteria to thrive on. I wonder if it would help to keep up the water changes, but not gravel vac so often?

I've never cleaned the filter in tap, only the tank water, and when I unplug the filter during water changes I take out the biowheel and let it float in the water. It actually does sink a little below the surface- I've wondered if that might be disrupting the bacteria as well? Would it be safe to leave it unplugged for up to twenty minutes?

I'm really grateful for the replies. I just feel like I should have SOMETHING happening at this point, even if the cycle isn't finished.

 

[Lolly123]

What kind of live plants do you have? You are using dechlorinator when you do water changes, right?

I think there may be a couple of ways to look at this. One way (and I hate to tell you, but I think your LFS is right) is that by changing the water daily you are diluting the ammonia concentration to the point where bacterial colonies never do grow in. Some fish *can* tolerate elevated levels of ammonia on a short term basis, although obviously this is not ideal and why fishless cycling is safer overall. If you've committed to a fish-in cycle, you're committed to exposing your fish to some ammonia. Check out the chart here http/fins.actwin.c...n-cycling.html. This gives you a sense of what kinds of levels of ammonia your fish might be able to tolerate. I don't recall off the top of my head about guppies and their hardiness in particular.

The other factor is the plants. Plants can facilitate cycling (especially if they are fast growing and heavily planted) by taking up ammonia and nitrites.

I'm not sure what kind of plants, honestly- they come from Petsmart in sealed containers. I'm afraid I just really picked what looked nice without much care (I would not do this again, as I've been doing more research into planted tanks). There's about twenty or so small to medium broad leafed plants.

I do treat the tap water- stress coat is a dechlorinator. I'm just wondering if you can over do with the dechlorinator.

Unfortunately, I don't believe guppies are hardy. I'm really afraid of killing these guys! With ten in there, you would think they'd make enough waste for the bacteria to thrive on. I wonder if it would help to keep up the water changes, but not gravel vac so often?

I've never cleaned the filter in tap, only the tank water, and when I unplug the filter during water changes I take out the biowheel and let it float in the water. It actually does sink a little below the surface- I've wondered if that might be disrupting the bacteria as well? Would it be safe to leave it unplugged for up to twenty minutes?

I'm really grateful for the replies. I just feel like I should have SOMETHING happening at this point, even if the cycle isn't finished.

I think you should you switch to something like seachem prime, i think it may be the best on the market at removing all the heavy metals etc from your water as well as being very concentrated. I dont think stress coat is very cost effective, or lasts very long and you'll probably get a lot more use out of the one I mentioned at the beginning.

 

[saz326]

Its a case of wait and see Im afraid. Although ammonia is toxic to fish there will always be a small amount of ammonia in the water - this is what the good bacteria eat. If there were none at all then the bacteria would never live & grow. Even a fully cycled tank will have some ammonia - it will just be low and off the chart and unreadable by the test kits we tend to use.

By now there will be some of the bacteria in your tank that you need, its just a case of caring for them and helping them grow. Guppys will not be producing that much waste so the ammonia produced will be at a low level. Changing the water quite so often during the cycle will remove the little waste available and so stall the bacterial growth.

You could assist the development of ammonia by slightly increasing the feeding of the guppies. Monitor the Ammonia and check it is no greater than 1 on your test kit - if that happens then do a 25% water change to get it down to 0.75. At this rate you will soon have the bacteria growing and will notice a drop in ammonia levels and arise in the Nitrites. Again - keep on top of teh nitrite levels and await the development of nitrates.

Good luck with the tank.

 

[SLIM]

Whats your PH???

Or has that been answered already

If your PH drops too low that will stall your cycle.
I thinks its anything below 7.0 stalls the cycle

 

[Gilli]

Your filter will be fine as long as its only ever rinsed gently in tank water - dont worry about the length of time you leave it unplugged while you are cleaning your tank. I once turned my external filter off to clean the tank and forgot to switch it back on for 24 hours and didnt even get a blip in my water stats!

And dont worry about the dechlorinator - you cant overdose with that and its better to add double the amount you really need rather than not enough!

 

[trianglekitty]

Your filter will be fine as long as its only ever rinsed gently in tank water - dont worry about the length of time you leave it unplugged while you are cleaning your tank. I once turned my external filter off to clean the tank and forgot to switch it back on for 24 hours and didnt even get a blip in my water stats!

And dont worry about the dechlorinator - you cant overdose with that and its better to add double the amount you really need rather than not enough!

Replying to a few posts-

PH is 7.8, so it shouldn't be that.

I will switch to the Seachem Prime since I'm almost finished the current bottle of Stress Coat anyway. I'll also stop taking the biowheel out just in case that was messing things up somehow. I'm going to try and do water changes every other day. Tonight the reading was .5 on ammonia. I'm also going to take a water sample in and let the petstore test it just in case I'm doing something wrong with the API test kit.

The store keep their cycling products in a fridge. I know they aren't supposed to work because the bacteria in them die, but would keeping them cool before purchase help? I'm talking about products like API Stresszyme, Biospira, etc. I might try one of them- I figure it can't hurt as this point. Any suggestions which would be the best, or has anyone had personal experience with them working?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[Harlequins]

Has your tap water is reading 0.25ppm , its going to make it difficult to get zero readings unless you change your water source,maybe RO water?? -
adding bottled bacteria imo is just wasting money,expensive product which claims can instantly cycle your tank is just money makers by the manufactures...

Seachem Prime will help in detoxifying your ammonia to a certain amount making it a bit safer for the fish.

 

[trianglekitty]

Has your tap water is reading 0.25ppm , its going to make it difficult to get zero readings unless you change your water source,maybe RO water?? -
adding bottled bacteria imo is just wasting money,expensive product which claims can instantly cycle your tank is just money makers by the manufactures...

Seachem Prime will help in detoxifying your ammonia to a certain amount making it a bit safer for the fish.

I'm getting Prime today. I was looking at the Seachem website and they said Prime converts the free ammonia into a nontoxic form. They also sell a test kit that tells you how much free ammonia you have vs. nontoxic. I may purchase this so I can get a better idea of how many days I can let the tank go without doing a water change to aid the cycle. Would ammonia that has been converted to a nontoxic form still help feed the bacteria though?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, the bacteria feed on both forms. I actually don't like Stress Coat for cycling - I once was having trouble with a cycle and switched from stress coat to Prime and saw a difference, so I'm hopeful this might help you a bit too and think you're making a good change there.

Have you discussed your filter and filter media with the members? Sometimes very inexpensive filters can have such a high leak-through rate that it seems to cause some problems. Are you reading the API ammonia test results in incandescent or sunlight? Reading them in front of compact fluorescents or such can give the result a greenish cast.

It is true, I must observe, that some of our most confusing cases are those where there is significan ammonia in the tap water. I don't know why this is, as the cycle should still proceed and at some point the colony of A-Bacs should be able to reduce both the tank produced ammonia and the tap added ammonia to zero in a reasonable period (provided there is sufficient bedding of biomedia to handle the bioload.)

I do agree with the idea that a small bit of overfeeding shouldn't hurt but I do not agree that over-dilution via water changes ever has much effect on colony growth - I agree with saz on that point that large and fully healthy bacterial populations are the norm on tanks which always read zero ppm ammonia by our ammonia test kits - they are feeding off the ammonia flow that's below our "zero" readings. However, it is true I think that smaller but more frequent water changes produces a better pattern when ammonia is coming in from the tap water.. unfortunately, since this obviously means more work.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[trianglekitty]

Yes, the bacteria feed on both forms. I actually don't like Stress Coat for cycling - I once was having trouble with a cycle and switched from stress coat to Prime and saw a difference, so I'm hopeful this might help you a bit too and think you're making a good change there.

Have you discussed your filter and filter media with the members? Sometimes very inexpensive filters can have such a high leak-through rate that it seems to cause some problems. Are you reading the API ammonia test results in incandescent or sunlight? Reading them in front of compact fluorescents or such can give the result a greenish cast.

It is true, I must observe, that some of our most confusing cases are those where there is significan ammonia in the tap water. I don't know why this is, as the cycle should still proceed and at some point the colony of A-Bacs should be able to reduce both the tank produced ammonia and the tap added ammonia to zero in a reasonable period (provided there is sufficient bedding of biomedia to handle the bioload.)

I do agree with the idea that a small bit of overfeeding shouldn't hurt but I do not agree that over-dilution via water changes ever has much effect on colony growth - I agree with saz on that point that large and fully healthy bacterial populations are the norm on tanks which always read zero ppm ammonia by our ammonia test kits - they are feeding off the ammonia flow that's below our "zero" readings. However, it is true I think that smaller but more frequent water changes produces a better pattern when ammonia is coming in from the tap water.. unfortunately, since this obviously means more work.

~~waterdrop~~

Thinking about it, that makes perfect sense- a cycled tank should read 0ppm, but we know the bacteria are alive and active. Having constant readings of .25 should be more than enough to keep the bacteria growing.

I switched to Prime and for the heck of it threw a bottle of the Tetra bacteria product. The next day I had these readings...

.25 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
5ppm Nitrate

I'm not sure if it was the Prime or the bacteria, but it looks like I've got the start of a cycle! I didn't change the water and today I have the same Ammonia reading, but the Nitrate has gone up to 10. Finally I'm seeing light at the end of this tunnel!

The filter is a Penguin Bio-Wheel rated for a 50 gallon. I have a standard filter cartridge with carbon, and an additional piece of basic foam to get fine particles out of the water and as another place for bacteria to grow. From what I understand, the Penguin is a good filter. My cartridge is heavily coated with a brown slime, but I haven't done more than gently dip it in the tank water from time to time.

I put in a Seachem free Ammonia test "decal" in the tank that is supposed to turn colors if the free ammonia gets to high. Problem is I have no idea if it really works or not. I'm still going to order their liquid test for free ammonia and see if it matches up or not.

Thanks so much for everyone's advice and especially for suggesting Prime. I do think the bacteria product may have helped as well, though I know often they don't.

One issue left though- I'm leaving for four days on Thursday, and while I'm gone the tank will have a water change daily. I trust the person looking after them to do the water change, but not to do a water test and only change it if need be, if that makes sense. Hopefully this won't disrupt things. I will have him only do 25% daily instead of the 50% I had been doing.

 

[CrustyOnEastCoast]

It is true, I must observe, that some of our most confusing cases are those where there is significan ammonia in the tap water. I don't know why this is, as the cycle should still proceed and at some point the colony of A-Bacs should be able to reduce both the tank produced ammonia and the tap added ammonia to zero in a reasonable period (provided there is sufficient bedding of biomedia to handle the bioload.)
~~waterdrop~~

Related to this, I have a 5 gallon tank, and I attempted fishless cycling. I followed all the directions closely. Using the "Add and Wait" method, it took 19 days for the ammonia to get down to 0! After redosing ammonia to get back to 5ppm on that day, it took 3 more days for ammonia to get back to 0. After that, 5ppm of ammonia was processed every 24 hours. But it took another 9 days for the ammonia to be processed to 0ppm every 12 hours.
After a little over 6 weeks total time, I could get the nitrite to process reliably in 24 hours. At this point, I stopped my fishless cycle and added fish. (I think I had read that the cycle was supposed to take 4-6 weeks, but now I am seeing people say it can last up to 70 days). In any case, I lacked patience and I didn't really finish all the way since my nitrites weren't processing every 12 hours (just every 24). But my tank has been fine (ammonia and nitrite are always reading 0 with the fish in it, with just 30% weekly water changes / gravel vac).

Just throwing this out there to provide more data about people with lowsy tap water (ammonia 1.5ppm in tap water).

 

[waterdrop]

It is true, I must observe, that some of our most confusing cases are those where there is significan ammonia in the tap water. I don't know why this is, as the cycle should still proceed and at some point the colony of A-Bacs should be able to reduce both the tank produced ammonia and the tap added ammonia to zero in a reasonable period (provided there is sufficient bedding of biomedia to handle the bioload.)
~~waterdrop~~

Related to this, I have a 5 gallon tank, and I attempted fishless cycling. I followed all the directions closely. Using the "Add and Wait" method, it took 19 days for the ammonia to get down to 0! After redosing ammonia to get back to 5ppm on that day, it took 3 more days for ammonia to get back to 0. After that, 5ppm of ammonia was processed every 24 hours. But it took another 9 days for the ammonia to be processed to 0ppm every 12 hours.
After a little over 6 weeks total time, I could get the nitrite to process reliably in 24 hours. At this point, I stopped my fishless cycle and added fish. (I think I had read that the cycle was supposed to take 4-6 weeks, but now I am seeing people say it can last up to 70 days). In any case, I lacked patience and I didn't really finish all the way since my nitrites weren't processing every 12 hours (just every 24). But my tank has been fine (ammonia and nitrite are always reading 0 with the fish in it, with just 30% weekly water changes / gravel vac).

Just throwing this out there to provide more data about people with lowsy tap water (ammonia 1.5ppm in tap water).

Thank you for the detailed description (most don't provide that in a discussion and yet it makes a difference because the thing under discussion is in fact that detailed, if you get what I mean lol.) Yes, you are describing quite a textbook fishless cycling progression and it gives me the opportunity to mention a little of where I see us coming from. The fact that you were only getting your nitrite zero within 24 hours but then did your big water change, got fish and saw no mini-spike just means that -statistically- you were in the majority situation where we don't happen to get mini-spiking. The problem is that some minority of the time, those of us who watch a lot of cases here will see people who get bad spikes after the big water change and they will be driven in to changing water like a fish-in cycling situation. So it's us, the rag-tag oddballs who have watched hundreds of fishless cyclers come through the beginners section who have adjusted the little recommendations in fits and starts over the years. Actually, your actions put you in to bit of a middle risk category in my mind as doing -anything- for 6 weeks seems to be much better than the ones who lose patience at 4 weeks or less - they are in much greater danger of much larger spikes after the water change. The boilerplate statements we make about 4-6 weeks (actually it always takes a fair amount of pushing to get people repeating 4-6 instead of 3-6, which was getting repeated a lot)... are really just psychology to tell the easier side of the story and not scare beginners off with too much talk about the cases that take longer. It's just a fact that breeding the correct colony sizes up from the typical clean city tap water with the fixed slow growth rate of these species is a process that is considerably longer than you almost ever see from people, especially by modern hurried societal habits. Coaxing people to have patience is pretty much the hardest thing we do in this subforum.

~~waterdrop~~