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

[azza21]

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"

NO! The lights are switched off at night, well i have a switch on the fluval edge and its turns the leds blue into a night light. I never have the tank light on all the time only from say 8am till 9pm.

Meanwhile you'll still need heat for the tank (84F) to get the water temp optimal for the bacteria startup.

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.

My fluvel edge 25w heater is non adjustable. Its set at 26C i cannot change that.

The tablets fertilisers were 'API Root Tabs 10 Tablets', i used all ten in the pack as the bloke at my lfs told me to buy these and plant one tab next to the root of every plant i placed, it will do wonders. Do you think using all ten in a 23l fluval edge tank is too much?

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.

Nutrafin Cycle just helps speed up the cycle for your fish, so as you could add them after a few days, its a gimmick. I only realised this after reading up on it online. I'm not sure it what type of bacteria it has, you'd have to google that up.

 

[azza21]

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)

No, i was very fortunate with the wood i got. As when i went into my local fish store i saw the wood in a tank and asked them if i could buy it and they let me. The wood has been in that tank for 4 years and the slate i also asked for had been in tank for 12. So the wood shouldn't be releasing any tannins after this amount of time, or if it is its a very small amount but i'd be surprised. There probably would have been bacteria on the wood and slate but wouldn't that bacteria have been good for my cycle process?

As for the red plants, thanks for telling me that. Because when i purchased them at lfs they said they'd be fine in a fluval edge, because of the tanks size, the plants are close to the surface and lighting on the tank, they would do well.

Thats why i bought the Eco-complete and API roots tabs as i wanted to give my plants every opportunity. I also have super LED lights to give the plants more light. I was told i wouldn't need c02 for my plants as the lighting is close enough to provide and the tank size.

 

[snazy]

Every plant needs CO2. In a tank with no fish I doubt it there is much CO2. I even think CO2 is more important than light for plants.
From the pictures you have posted, it doesn't seem to me like green algae. It looks brownish to me, unless the pictures are deceiving. If it is green algae indeed, the fish would actually love it if it doesn't bother you.