Fish-Less Cycle

[dissimulo]

Hi all,

Today is the eleventh day of my fish-less cycle. Below is my log so far.

First of all, how am I doing? [font="arial][size="2"]I understand my API test kit isn't the most reliable but the general indication is that I'm progressing fairly well. The readings suggest I've reached a milestone in that Ammonia is being processed in 24 hours or less. Due to this, as of tomorrow morning, I will be testing twice daily at 05:45:00 as well as 17:45:00. Having already reduced the Ammonia dosage form 5 ppm to 3 ppm, at what stage do I need to increase it back to 5 ppm in order to determine if the process is taking place within 10-12 hours?[/size][/font]
[font="arial] [/font][/color]
[color="#222222"][font="arial][size="2"]Cheers,[/size][/font]
[font="arial][size="3"] [/size][/font]
[font="arial][size="3"]Luke.[/size][/font]

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Luke, can I hire you as a web guru? ... better yet, maybe you could create some kind of template or cheat-sheet or step-by-step that we could hand out to all beginners who come here so that their fishless cycling log would be as readable and colorful as yours! Wow!

OK, back to your cycle. Yes, you are doing great, you only had to wait until day 8 to see progress and that's progress with both ammonia dropping and nitrite beginning to trace, so very good. In three more days you proceeded straight on to the end of Phase 1 and are now in Phase 2 (of 3 phases.)

You have jumped the gun on your thinking about testing. You don't need to start twice-a-day testing until the third phase, not at the beginning of the second phase. You are correct in reducing your dosing to 3ppm for now and its later, after you are part way in to the third phase that you will ease the dosing back up to the full 5ppm of ammonia. The 5ppm is only important for the last half of the last phase.

The 2nd phase you are in is the "Nitrite Spike" stage and it will end when the nitrite spike suddenly drops down from 5ppm to zero ppm. Once nitrite can drop to zero within 24 hours you have entered the 3rd phase for sure. As said, that's when you add the 12-hour tests. (they are just tests, not ammonia adds, you only ever add ammonia at the 24 hour mark)

The second phase you are in is marked by the extreme boredom of feeling like the nitrite spike will never end. The problems you will face in the 3rd phase are different: there is sometimes the "sticking problem" where either ammonia or nitrite gets -almost- to zero ppm at 12 hours but then seemingly can't make in for a long stretch of time, driving you crazy. The 3rd phase also carries a higher likelihood of a pH crash. By the way, that reminds me, pH tests are not so important at first but you should still do at least one per week and later they will need to be more frequent.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dissimulo]

Hahaa, with pleasure! I'm glad you appreciate my effort. I try to go the extra mile with most 'paper based' tasks, purely because it makes tracking progress so much easier. Perhaps I could make an Excel template and attach it to a post? Along with a short statement/set of instructions on how to efficiently log the required data?

Anyway, that aside, thank you so much for the information you put in your reply. I totally understand what you said regarding the different phases and why not to begin 12 hour tests just yet. Also, I have been doing occasional pH/HR pH tests but haven't yet logged them. Both of which read a constant 7.6 pH and 7.8 HR pH. However, your later point about the 'sticking problem' is slightly lost on me. Could you explain it further?

Cheers,

Luke.

 

[Gvilleguy]

Excellent log. I have mine in Excel - but I did not color code it like you did!

 

[waterdrop]

In the 3rd phase of fishless cycling the nitrite spike has finally gone away and 24 hours after ammonia is added each day you will be getting zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite(NO2). The short-term goal then changes to waiting for both to drop faster and faster until they can both reach zero ppm at your new 12-hour-after-dosing test. The pattern we frequently see is that the amounts left at the 12 hour test keep getting lower fairly quickly in the first week or so after you've entered phase 3 but then sometimes the progress stops and you feel kind of stuck getting 0.25ppm or some trace of nitrite (or sometimes ammonia seems to go backwards and -its- the one that shows a trace at 12 hours) and this then seems to go on longer than it should. That's the thing I call the "sticking problem."

Once you finally achieve "double-zeros" at 12 hours you can start your Qualifying Week.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. (So what form do you save the excel sheet in and then how do you invoke it in your post.. people keep telling me this and I forget.. GVG probably told me.)

 

[dissimulo]

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for elaborating, I understand what you mean now. I can see that I might be trapped in phase two for a little while longer. In fact, I'm quite concerned at the moment as I go away next week (Wednesday till Friday/Saturday) which obviously means I won't be around to regulate the cycle. Any ideas?

As for my cycle log, I save it as a normal Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet. Having done this, I screen print the open document, crop it down to size using Photoshop, upload the newly saved .JPG image to Photobucket and voilla.

Cheers,

Luke.

 

[waterdrop]

Perhaps adding the smallest pinch of flake food to your usual 5ppm ammonia dose before leaving might contribute a bit of further-going ammonia on the later days, but really, my feeling is that if you don't have someone to do some dosing for you it doesn't matter that much. It might slow the cycle a little but I feel from watching cases here that it usually recovers, and sometimes better than one might think.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. thanks for the elaboration on your log posting!

 

[dissimulo]

For me, any decaying matter other than Ammonia will be used as a last resort. I'm hoping my ex-enthusiast uncle will agree to take care of things for a few days.

Now, Regarding my cycle, it seems the pH balance is beginning to decline. Below is my log so far.

Should this worry me at all?

Cheers,

Luke.

 

[waterdrop]

That's fine, I kept mine pure ammonia too. And you don't have to have him do everyday necessarily, as a strategic time or two keeps things up during your away periods.

As for your pH decline, you might want to take a peek at NO3, as sometimes a bit of pH decline during the nitrite spike means the N-Bacs are beginning to convert a little NO2 into NO3. You can combat the pH drop by dosing bicarb (get help if you don't know the stuff about this) at 2 teaspoons per 50L (you'll have to calc out.) It saves you some water changes in terms of maintaining "bacterial growing soup" that is closer to the right brew for our two species of bacteria.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dissimulo]

I'n not too familiar with adjusting pH balance so I'd need to have a read. Am I right in thinking Ammonia is causing the decline? And that there is a limit at which bacteria will cease reproduction? Also, having carried out a quick test, the reading shows there to be 5 ppm of NitrAte as usual.

Cheers,

Luke.

 

[jaylam]

Excellent log, im just starting the cycle......any chance I could get a copy of that spreadsheet

 

[waterdrop]

No, its not the ammonia, its the cycling process and in particular the end product, nitrate(NO3.) Nitrate in aqueous solution has about a 7% nitric acid component which of course is highly acidic. This is what lowers the pH over the course of cycle, IF the carbonate hardness (KH) is low enough to allow it. Carbonate hardness (or the TDS analogue that our hobbyist KH kits give us) is a measure of that aspect of mineral content that can react with acids and neutralize them such that protons are used up and pH won't fall. So, depending on a tank's KH value and the Nitrate production of the cycle, pH may fall.

You are correct that if pH falls quickly enough (the rate of pH fall is the correct factor, rather than the absolute pH number, but in practice we just go by the numbers for a discussion like this) then the nitrogen cycling process will "stall out" or "crash." We typically say that it (the cycling process) gets slower and slower as we pass down through the 6's, stalls out at 6.2 and crashes at 6.0 (crash meaning no progress is detected in the cycling process and a 90% water change is needed to get some mineral content and higher pH back in the tank water.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dissimulo]

Right then, well that was certainly an insightful read. So given that I have a pH balance of 6.8, am I at any immediate risk of crashing? As in, is the situation unstable enough to cause a sudden pH drop? Is there anything I can do to raise the pH? And would it be necessary to carry out such procedure?

Cheers,

Luke.

 

[waterdrop]

Its your call. You could either keep monitoring it by logging daily pH results and holding off on any action or you could go ahead and dose bicarb. What you do is get pure kitchen baking soda (make sure its baking soda, not baking powder, which can sometimes have additional ingredients.) Baking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate or "bicarb" as we call it for short. It can raise KH and pH and is basically harmless in a fishless cycle but its not our top choice in situations where there are fish in the tank. The final large water change after a fishless cycle will take away the traces of sodium bicarbonate well enough.

I recommend a startoff dose of 2 teaspoons per 50L of tank volume. I choose this because a dose of 1t/50L will only raise KH without raising pH and a dose of 3t/50L will raise pH quite a lot, so 2 is the compromise which you can then play with once you see feedback from your own tank and readings. The optimal bacterial growth pH is 8.0 to 8.4 I think we've already mentioned. I like to dose bicarb on the refill of a large water change at the same time I'm re-charging the ammonia concentration, so if you do that, note that the fresh tap water will also have put some minerals back in. There's nothing radical about this, its done quite a bit.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dissimulo]

I think I'll continue to monitor my readings for now but if I begin to see a further decline in balance, I'll dose with baking soda. You mention how you dose with baking soda after a large water change, is this during a fish-less cycle or after a regular water change of an established, inhabited tank? I've been led to believe it isn't necessary to do a water change during a fish-less cycle.

Thanks a lot for the information.

Cheers,

Luke.