Fishless Cycle Help

[Clammie]

I just started my fishless cycle yesterday, it seems to have gone a bit wrong.
I think I need some help .

I added 20ml of household ammonia to the tank to get the ammonia to 5mg/l.

Day 1 showed
5mg/l ammonia
0 nitrite
0 nitrate
6/6.5 pH

Before adding the same amount of ammonia, day 2 is showing
2.4 mg/l ammonia
3.3 mg/l nitrite
110 mg/l nitrate
6/6.5 pH

Anyone know what's happened and/or how to fix this?
Could it be due to a change in water temp.?
It's a 5ft 110 US gallon tank if that helps.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Clammie, Is it a brand new tank, filter and filter media or are any of them used in some way and could you detail for each? How long has water been in and have fish ever been in? What test kit - is this the Nutrafin Mini-Master? Also could you post all the test results for your tap water for the members. With these things the members should be able to get started helping you!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Clammie]

Hi waterdrop, the tank is new.
The filter and media have been used before.
The filter has been cleaned out completely, pipes and everything.
The media has been boil washed, scrubbed and left to dry for over a month.
The water has been in the tank for about 2 months(?) while I set it all up. There has never been any fish in this tank.
Yes, it's the Nutrafin mini master test kit I'm using.

Here are the results from the tap water:

Ammonia - 0 mg/l
Nitrite - 0 mg/l
Nitrate - 0 mg/l
pH - 5.5/6.0

Is it normal to have NO traces of anything in the tap water?

 

[JoshuaA]

This is just a curiosity post here.

Does the Nutrafin test read out in Mg/L? As opposed to PPM on the API master test kit? These two are substantially different in my eyes aren't they in terms of measurement?

Clammie, For your query about anything being in the tap water. My tap water at both my girlfriends and my house comes out with 0ppm for everything. However I believe my tap water is more around the 7 on the ph scale. I believe NitrAtes will be found in some water supplies due to things like agricultural run off "contaminating" your water supply. It is completely dependant on where you live though I guess and in some places what the weather is like!

Good Luck!

 

[Clammie]

Hey JoshuaA,
Yeah, it does measure it in Mg/L instead of PPM. And I've read they're both very different. Maybe someone could confirm this.
Thanks for the info on the tap water as well

 

[OldMan47]

mg/L and ppm are the same number in the range of concentrations that we measure. Your excessive cleaning of the old filter media will mean you can expect to be starting your cycle from scratch. By letting the water simply run for a couple of months, you have done nothing to begin developing a biological filter. Do not add 5 mg/L daily to your tank. You may choose the add daily method if you wish but going above 5 mg/L is going to cause you to develop the wrong bacteria in your filter. You only add enough ammonia to return the levels to 5 mg/L. Most of us have used the add and wait approach where you dose up to around 5 mg/L and then wait until it gets near zero before adding any more ammonia.
With your excessively cleaned filter, I was a bit surprised by the drop you saw in ammonia levels the first day. Do you have a lot of live plants in that tank?

 

[Clammie]

Thanks for your reply, oldman47.

I cleaned the media so well because I wanted to start from scratch, to try to make sure I got it right.
The filter was only set up and running on the day I started the cycle. I only had the water in there so I could start to set it all up.
Earlier today when I did my tests, I got exactly the same reading as the day before. (Also added 20ml of ammonia yesterday after testing).
If I'm going to add the ammonia when it reaches 0 again, should I change the water and start over? Or just let the ammonia get to 0 and take it from there?
I have no plants in the tank, just a few ornaments. So I have no idea how the ammonia dropped so quickly.

 

[OldMan47]

Have a close look at your filter media. If you are running something like zeolite in the filter it can cause the same kind of misleading numbers.
When ammonia drops top zero, there is no need to do a water change, just re-dose to about 5 ppm. Have you read through the fishless cycle thread? There is a link to it in my signature area.

 

[Clammie]

I'm not using any chemical filtration either, only mechanical and biological.
I just read the article now, I'm going to use the 'add and wait' method, like you suggested. It seems to be the best.
Can you see any reason for the decrease in ammonia and/or the nitrite and nitrate spike? Is that normal?

 

[waterdrop]

The only explanation that I can see is that despite the biomedia being cleaned and boiled, it has somehow had some aspect of it having been previously used that is behaving as if it still has some semblance of a bacterial colony remaining established. Its the kind of observation that will have to bear up to repeated days and logged tests before we should get too caught up worrying about it I think. Add and Wait method is the right choice I think, since its what we all have experience with and can help with the most.

~~waterdrop~~