Fishless Cycle Ammonia Rising

[hoyfoys]

Hello,

I've been doing a fishless cycle (as described on this forum) and until recently everything was going well. I put in ammonia and waited until it dropped to 0. Then, every day I've added 4ppm of Ammonia and happily watched it drop to 0. My nitrite level is now starting to drop too but yesterday my ammonia level was 0.4mg/litre and today it's 0.8mg/litre! I've been adding the ammonia everyday except 1 when I was away and my wife forgot to do it. Also the pH seems to have dropped (to about 6.5 from 8)

I have a yeast CO2 supply for my plants and add one of the bacteria filter start products every other day. I add fertiliser once a week.

What's going wrong and what should I do? I was hoping to be days away from adding my first fish...

Thanks for the help.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

First, save yourself the money and stop adding any bottled bacteria to your filter. One of two things is going to happen. 1) You are adding a chemical that is "processing" ammonia, which will stunt the growth of your bacterial colony. 2) You are continally adding a worthless product that is only costing you money for no added benefit.


I am working on a fishless cycle with bottled bacteria (SafeStart). If the product is really adding the right bacteria, you shouldn't need to continually add it. SafeStart has seemed to offer me no real benefit. It is designed to be used once and only once, to "seed" the media with bacteria and then have then colonize from there on their own. Continually adding is a pointless endeavor.


Second, what are your nitrate readings? When nitrates rise, that can cause a pH crash. It isn't usually a big deal, a water change , a little baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and redose ammonia and you are sorted. HOWEVER, you are also dosing CO2, which will also lower pH - it is for this reason that folks generally don't recommend cycling a tank with plants in place.



Have you read about a "silent" cycle? I highly recommend you check on that. If you need to inject CO2, your plant growth should be high enough to greatly cut down on the ammonia created by a few fish. "Why we should not fishless cycle a planted tank"


Good luck!

 

[hoyfoys]

Thanks for the reply. I got the bottled bacteria free with the tank so just thought I'd use it. I'd not realised that a fishless cycle should be without plants, but it's too late to change that now

Nitrate seems to vary from day to day from between 50-100, I'd planned to do a 50-60% water change once the Nitrite dropped to 0. Then add fish. It is slowly dropping.

I do have brown diatoms.

What do you think is causing the Ammonia rise? From that cycle info you kindly posted I'd have thought it wouldn't be due to the plants. How do you think I should progress, especially given that I'm 3 weeks into the cycling and it is now too late to take some of the steps mentioned? Looking at that article with my understanding (limited!) it seems I should do a water change, add Zeolite and fish (should I wait until the Nitrite has dropped to 0?). Then add Zeolite daily (with daily water changes for a week or so). Would I need to add Zeolite everyday for the life of the tank or is it just until fish are added?

I'm happy enough with plant growth so far, though I'm sure someone with more experience wouldn't be, so I'm not concerned about making it faster. I currently don't pump much CO2 in and I'm not heavily planted (see photo).

Thanks again for the help

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I'm not sure what advice to give you for this... I've never done a cycle like this, nor do I have advice to add beyond directing you to the Planted Aquarium Resource Center.

I'm sure that a true expert will be along shortly. Waterdrop, Oldman47, etc. will certainly be along to point you in the right direction.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi guys, I don't think hoyfoys is doing anything wrong. The result of doing a good job on the fishless cycling is that the end product nitrate(NO3) will build up and quite often the KH (carbonate hardness) of the water is not enough to keep the pH from dropping. It is more due to the acid component of the nitate than to CO2. I would definately do a large water change and I'd try to make it as much bigger than 60% as you can, without breaking the plant stems or anything like that. The water change often causes the bacteria to pause a day or so in their processing but in the long run the lowering of nitrate and nitrite will be good for the fishless cycle.

Don't worry about ammonia not being processed all the way to zero even though it was before. We see this quite a bit and it's no problem in the long run.

Lighting hours are the best control for brown algae (diatoms.) If you are at 12 hours then drop to 10 hours. If you are 10 hours then drop to 8 hours. Don't drop below 4 hours. Have patience as it will take weeks to know when the shorter hours have made things better. The brown algae already there will not readily leave just because you shorten the hours though, you will want to do some gentle cleaning (gentle if on plants, gravel algae can just be disturbed by the siphon, decoration algae can be removed and sponge cleaned, glass algae can be sponge cleaned) and of course the best time to clean algae is immediately before a water change.

I think Dave's article about the silent cycle is excellent, I just would advise caution about choosing whether you are a person to use it. It works best for very serious planted tank systems where plants cover more than 70% of the substrate and the aquarist is experienced and confident that the plants are not only going to live but are growing rapidly. In my experience that is a relatively tiny subset of typical beginners. For the rest of us a traditional fishless cycle seems safer to the fish, if somewhat more frustrating because of the additional patience needed when not having fish.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hoyfoys]

Thanks Eagles, worst case I'll just wait until the Nitrite drops, do a water change for the Nitrate and stop putting the Ammonia in, the bacteria must be doing something as it is dropping a bit. Then I'll add fish, the cycle has to be more advanced than the with fish cycle my local fish shop advised...

 

[waterdrop]

You are probably at the end of the second phase (the "nitrite spike" phase) and just beginning the third phase of fishless cycling. If nitrite is dropping to zero ppm within 24 hours, this would be the case. During the next days you want to begin also doing a 12 hour test set (nitrite mostly.) The goal is to watch nitrite(NO2) get lower and lower at that "12-hour test" and then when it hits zero ppm (ie. when you dose 5ppm and then see both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) drop to zero ppm at the 12 hour test) you get to start your "qualifying week." The qualifying week is the thing that will truly ensure that you your biofilter just won't give any glitches of poison to the new fish in your first stocking. It is a great feeling and helps you remember for years what a good biofilter is all about.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[eaglesaquarium]

You are probably at the end of the second phase (the "nitrite spike" phase) and just beginning the third phase of fishless cycling. If nitrite is dropping to zero ppm within 24 hours, this would be the case. During the next days you want to begin also doing a 12 hour test set (nitrite mostly.) The goal is to watch nitrite(NO2) get lower and lower at that "12-hour test" and then when it hits zero ppm (ie. when you dose 5ppm and then see both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) drop to zero ppm at the 12 hour test) you get to start your "qualifying week." The qualifying week is the thing that will truly ensure that you your biofilter just won't give any glitches of poison to the new fish in your first stocking. It is a great feeling and helps you remember for years what a good biofilter is all about.

~~waterdrop~~

See... right on time.

 

[hoyfoys]

Hi waterdrop,

Thanks for the help.

I think I'm close to that stage but I'm surprised that the Ammonia hasn't dropped to 0 for the last 2 days, after doing that consistantly everyday for over a week. Do you know what might have caused that slight rise, whether it's normal at this stage and what to do if not?

Thanks again

 

[waterdrop]

It's an interesting question what causes that observation and I don't claim to know, but I do know that it's a valid observation: The A-Bacs can be doing a great job of dropping x amount of ammonia dose to zero ppm for weeks on end and then all of a sudden they will just not get it down to zero ppm in quite the same time frame, it just happens! It's all part of a fishless cycle and eventually after the filter has fully cycled you virtually never see this anymore.

In fact, I can further characterize this for you some. In general I've observed that A-Bacs (Nitrosomonas spp.) are much quicker to grow and begin to do their thing initially than N-Bacs (Nitrospira spp.) but the N-Bacs seem to be better at "hanging tough" after their slow arrival. This even seems to hold true a little in the very long run when mature media is moved or filters are seriously disturbed - you'll often see more symptoms of disturbance from the A-Bacs than the N-Bacs. Kind of funny considering how slow the proper sized N-Bac colony is to initially grow than the initial A-Bac colony (of course the N-Bac colony needs to be 3 times bigger so that part makes sense.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hoyfoys]

Ha yeah, that's very interesting. Thanks for putting my mind at rest, being new I just don't know what's normal and I really want to get up to speed fast for the sake of the fish. I'm already learning from my mistakes and I don't even have fish yet! I hope the A-Bacs settle down again, I can't wait to get some fish now!

Thanks again for the help.

 

[waterdrop]

The period of fishless cycling and having lots of learning sessions with the members is extremely valuable. It is often your only period to get really good hands-on feel of what biofilters are all about and to establish other important habits. It's weird but after you get fish then everything goes in to more of a steady state and the learning is slower. Remember, a healthy tank essentially runs for years and years and the chemistry and habits are essentially very steady. So then, years later when you go to do something new or deal with a big accident, it matters whether you really learned your biofilter lessons or not!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hoyfoys]

Yeah the guy at my fish shop was saying not to fishless cycle as it takes too long but I wanted to do the best thing by the fish and thought I'd learn more about the nitrogen cycle this way I've tried to research and this forum seems the best

 

[OldMan47]

Don't worry too much hoyfoys. You are in good hands with WD. The slowing of the ammonia processing was due to the pH drop so the huge water change that WD suggested should get the pH back where it belongs and the ammonia processing should resume. Being near the end, you may again see a rapid drop in pH as the nitrates build. Another way to deal with a pH drop is to use some sodium bicarbonate, baking soda, but a water change would work fine too.

 

[hoyfoys]

So today the Ammonia was 2! That said I finished my Interpet test kit last night and started my API master test kit today, the colour on the API was the same as the Interpet but the API said 2, not 0.8 like the Interpet. I'm not sure if it's just that they are different or 1 is more accurate. pH was 6.4

Good news is that the Nitrite dropped to 0.5 and Nitrate 5.

Anyway, I've now done a 60-70% water change and checked the Ammonia, it's now 0.5 as you'd expect from that % change. pH is up to about 7.5. I'll add about 3ppm ammonia and see what it's like tomorrow. Hopefully the ammonia and nitrate will drop to 0, or close, and the Nitrate will be low. I'll then monitor it for a few days and if things stabalise I'll start adding fish. I guess that before adding the fish I should do a 25% water change if the Ammonia and Nitrite are 0 and Nitrate is low or 50% if they are higher? Does that sound right?

One other question, how do people suggest getting the temperature right at water changes? I was about 4 degrees to hot using touch. Would you literally measure it as you fill the bucket?

I plan to get the following fish:

6 Glass Catfish
6 Odessa Barbs
1 or 2 Blue Ram/Butterfly Cichlid

I thought I might put the Catfish and Barbs in and then wait a week or 2 before putting the Rams in. Is that the best plan?