Fishless Cycle 6 Days In & Amm, Ni & Na At Sky High Levels-Hel

[azza21]

Hi guys, i'm new to the aquarium world, i recently purchased a fluval edge 23l as it looked stunning and its small, i didn't want to bite off more than i can chew as i'm new to all this. I wanted to go down the fishless cycle root so i done my bit of research, watched a few video's and so on.


I wanted to use real plants, wood and rock/slate, so i purchased all the bits from my lfs. I was fortunate as the two bits of rock and wood they let me have, had been in one of there show tanks for several years and they let me buy them, was well chuffed with that.

So last sunday i setup my fluval edge, used eco-complete as my substrate as i've read its superb for helping plant growth. I give the rock and slate a clean and obviously left them in decloranated water then placed the rock and wood in my fluval, added all my small plant fert tablets & planted the tank out.

On the first 2 days i followed the fluval manual and poured Nutrafin Cycle into the tank, as to start of the bacterial cycle. However after reading comments about the stuff i stopped using it.

I decided to start using household ammonia instead but i had to order it online and it still hasn't arrived as off yet. So i thought its best to leave the tank until my ammonia arrives i mean 4/5 days won't do anything any harm.

I hadn't done a test for since wednesday, when everything was at almost 0, but i did notice a bit off cloudyness but i assumed thats cos its a newly setup tank.

I went away for 2 nights and came back today and looked at my tank the water seems to be getting more cloudy with a green tint and some of the plant leafs seem to be rotting (as seen in the pics).

I decided to do all the tests here they are as follows:

Ammonia: 1.00 ppm

Nitrite: 2.0 ppm & 5.0 ppm

Nitrate: 40 ppm

pH: 7.8

Temp: around 75f / 24c



Its a new fluval edge and uses super LED lights which are much better than the old holagen lights.

These are all extremely high for a tank i only setup 5/6 days ago. I haven't added anything to the tank in 4 days since i stopped using Nutrafin Cycle.

What am i doing wrong...

Have i over planted this tank? Is it too small a tank for that many plants...i bought an airstone which i'm going to setup to add more air to the tank. Thing is i have only added 8 or so plants i've seen fluval edges with lots more plants than what i have and there water is clear and its looks as if the tank is thriving.

Maybe i'm wrong its nothing to do with the plants, if not then what has caused these high levels in 3/4 days?

Do i start it all again, take out all the plants, water and so on?

Hope you guys can help.




Link to PICTURES:

http://imageshack.us/g/41/dscf2380fk.jpg/​

 

[waterdrop]

Lots of things here and I must run so I'll leave it to the others.. but a few quick comments. Be sure you are only lighting for 4 to 6 hours or so - your green tint (which may just be reflections of your leaves hopefully) may be an early warning about an algae bloom from too much light and you don't want that.

The fishless cycling in a small tank with lots of plants can be more tricky to do but it can still be done just fine, so stick with it I would say. Ideally fishless cycling is done in a more bare tank so that you can understand the test results better (plants sometimes eat a lot of your ammonia!) Also, a new tank is a very hostile environment for plants because few of the 17 nutrients they need are present yet. Be sure and work on your nutrient plan and your liquid carbon dosing (probably.)

Until you get the ammonia I would crush up 3 or so fish food flakes to help begin some ammonia creation that way. It can't hurt although in the long run of course it is much less controlled than ammonia dosing.

Good luck. You're on the right track and don't need to do dramatic changes. Some will say you should perform a "silent cycle" with your plants but be aware that this can be difficult for beginners and it is likely an ammonia cycle will be a bit easier although none of them are easy as far as waiting goes.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. all the lighting in one period of the day, don't break it up - pick the time when most of the family are home to enjoy looking at the plants and use a lamp timer to control the lights.

 

[Tolak]

I moved this from Hardware & Do It Yourself to Your New Freshwater Tank. You''l get more replies here, waterdrop is probably the best there is for this sort of situation.

 

[CezzaXV]

Plants generally arent recommended for a fishless cycle. Partly because theyll eat ammonia and so retard your bacteria growth, and secondly because they need light, and light plus ammonia will create massive amounts of algae.

Secondly, regardless of where it came from, many people here would dream of having nitrite on day six of their cycle.

 

[Fish are friends]

Hi there and welcome our world... first things first. there is a section on the main page called beginners resource center. take a look at that and it might give you an idea of where to go from here... I have never done a planted cycle but from your readings i would do a 90% water change. test your tap water to see where you are starting from so you know what quality the tap water is... what you got to remember is try be patient a cycle can take a while. my first tank took 3 mnths...there is laods of people here to help you and as said above waterdrop is a valuable source of advice...good luck

 

[azza21]

The waters good guys i tested my tap water before i put it in the tank, had nothing other then the ph being at 7.8 which is standard for around this area.
After reading a bit more some people seem to think lighting left on too much could be a problem. Thing is i only leave the lights on in the day at night i switch the lights to night time (blue leds) and then i turn the lights back on in the morning.

Some of the plant leafs are going brown, die'ing, would that be increasing the high levels that i'm getting on my API test results?
Lastly someone mentioned on another forum my gravel, eco-compete may effect my test results as it has bacteria in it for the plants to grow, which seems a bit odd. Anyone else had problem with eco-complete effecting there test results?

 

[HayzH]

so your lights are permanantly on?
NO lights should be on in a fishless cycle. This will certainly be the cause of the "green tinge"

 

[CezzaXV]

Hayz is right. Consider removing the plants and storing them somewhere else.

 

[waterdrop]

Depending on your hardware situation it is true that you might think about setting up a temporary plant nursery. You could use one of those large plastic storage containers from a discount store and rig heat and lights carefully or perhaps just find a place that is not too cold. Meanwhile you'll still need heat for the tank (84F) to get the water temp optimal for the bacteria startup. Rigging tops for both containers might be a bit of a fuss.

For the plants you'll want to find some liquid carbon such as Seachem Flourish Excel or in UK one of the fish stores has another one. For the ferts you can use TPN+ (Tropica Plant Nutrition Plus (the Plus being important as there's a non-plus one that's not what you want I believe) easily found in Europe (or difficult to find in US.) In the US you can use a combo of 5 Flourish types (N,P,K,Iron,Trace) with the Excel or you can use the plain Flourish or the plant folks may have other brand recommendations. In the long run it can be argued that a mature, stocked tank will provide most of the N,P,K via waste but in a new stark tank it can be quite helpful to provide proper plant nutrition.

The plants would do fine in your temporary nursery and would happily come back to the tank at the same time the fish are introduced about a month from now or so. The current nitrates may be a leftover from the bottled bacteria, sometimes we see that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[snazy]

Lastly someone mentioned on another forum my gravel, eco-compete may effect my test results as it has bacteria in it for the plants to grow, which seems a bit odd. Anyone else had problem with eco-complete effecting there test results?

I think that's about right.

(Tropica Plant Nutrition Plus (the Plus being important as there's a non-plus one that's not what you want I believe)

@waterdrop. The Tropica Plant Nutrition Plus differs from the Tropical Plant Nutrition normal version by containging nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). You normally have these two in abundance in most tanks.

 

[waterdrop]

Snazy, many thanks for the Plus/non-Plus explanation. We, very sadly, can hardly get any Tropica things over here - I always consider those on the UK side to be lucky in many ways for this hobby. Given what you say I can see why I've seen the Plus recommendation for new tanks, makes sense as there will not yet be the build-up that a more mature tank has (of excess fish food breakdown and other waste.)

I'm too rusty to remember what kind of readings EcoComplete might give off, if any. There are definately plant substrates out there that give off ammonia and other things very strongly at first but I really don't think EC is one of them. I do remember that EC has some nutrients attached to the rocks but I don't remember ever hearing that anyone thinks bacteria are on them when you buy them.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[snazy]

Just an explanation on theory about how eco complete can mess up your cycle.

That Eco Complete comes with heterotrophic bacteria to apparently help with waste.
This type of bacteria multiplies in the matter of hours, but eats ammonia only at super slow rate, very slow..
The bacteria that we try to grow in the filter to cycle the tank is autotrophic, and for it to multiply it takes over 24 hours. It eats ammonia a million times faster, that's why you want to grow this one.

When you introduce heterotrophic bacteria in a tank that you want to grow autotrophic bacteria instead, both compete for oxygen and since the heterotrophic is way faster to reproduce, it can take over eventually all the surfaces and suffocates the good bacteria. Your cycle will seem to be going, but just a very slow ammonia conversion and nitrites off the charts(on theory)

 

[snazy]

@azzy21

I have never used or read about the Nutrafin Cycle you used, but I presume it also contains the wrong bacteria-heterotrophic type on top of the eco complete you used. I'd say there is no space for the good bacteria to grow. If you water is cloudy, that's another proof.

 

[ShinySideUp]

My two-pence worth:

There is ammonia in the tank, bacteria need ammomnia; so that's good.

If it was my tank and it was exactly as you have it all I would do is reduce lighting to just two or three hours a day with just ambient daylight for the rest of the time (here I assume there is not too much external light reaching the tank). There are no fish in the tank so you can't do any damage to livestock so just leave it, keep your filter free of clogging and take out any decaying foliage then just wait and let nature take it's course with a couple of 50% water changes a week to keep algal spores down.

 

[snazy]

Edit: Just a bit of explanation to my previous post about the cloudy water. It is most often caused by the heterotrophic bacteria in a tank. When it meets "lovely" conditions, to multiply it goes into the water volume and multiplies like rabbits,hence the cloudy water. It is normally a bit harder to attach to surfaces, unlike the good autotrophic bacteria, that's why the cloudiness.
Every cycled tank has some heterotrophic bacteria, but not in that ammount a Nutrafin cycle or eco complete product would add it. It's purpose in a balanced tank is to live deep into the substrate and convert organic waste to ammonia without using oxygen, not ammonia to nitrite, although it can do both but it is extremely slow to convert ammonia, compared to autotrophic bacteria.
When something causes it to multiply too fast(dirty tank), or there is too much of it(added artificially), it goes into the water volume and starts stealing oxygen and ammonia from the other bacteria. That's what you don't want happening as it tends to take over and suffocate your other bacteria.
You will quite often see someone with a cycle problem, even in an old tank that has cloudy water thinking it's not a bad thing.

For the plants, I don't see why they would be so badly affected by the cycle itself. You have red species plants there and with my limited experience I could presume these need injected carbon, lots of lights and lots of ferts you don't have in a new tank.
As for the water, it looks like you have driftwood leaking tannins? The cloudiness maybe from my theory above.
I don't see green algae, but be prepared to encounter brown algae(it's like dust, very easily removable and will go away on it's own eventually once tank is cycled)