Fishless Cycle Lagg & Stocking Question

[waterdrop]

And your same nitrite kit shows zero ppm for your tap water, right? Have you thought about just getting a new possibly different brand master kit? Have you attempted to talk with your local water authority lab to see if they can think of any parameters of your local water that might be out of the ordinary? WD

 

[anon02]

Re the second paragraph of your 19/11 post, I read that as you dosing ammonia which the a bacs reduce to nitrite which the n bacs are in insufficient numbers to deal with i.e. the nitrite spike ?

How are you cleaning your test tubes after testing

 

[Uriel]

I would do a massive water change to bring nitrite and nitrate into the 0.5-1ppm and then dose at 2ppm ammonia.

What test kit are you using for the PH. The reason i ask this is i have had my tap water tested at home and at 2 LFS. My home kit and the 1 lfs where about 7.4 for ph and the other lfs was 6.2ph. for exactly the same water.

I read in an article about nitrogen cycle that different bacteria are used to convert ammonia at very high levels than those ate lower levels and that overdosing your tank with ammonia can slow the cycle because this one bacteria develops and then the bacteria you actually want has to fight it for space. May be a similar case with nitrite but can't be sure.

Not claiming to be a cycle wiz just tend to read a lot of articles on the internet.

 

[waterdrop]

RE these last two posts, yes Uriel, that info refers to A-Bacs only and is the reason the 5ppm is chosen to stay well below about 8ppm, where a different species of A-Bac can take hold and cause a significant setback to the fishless cycling process. The 8ppm A-Bac grows well only at these higher concentrations but dies off when concentrations drop (significantly meaning its useless in cycled tanks) and the speculation is that the biofilms it makes take up space that our 5ppm and lower A-Bacs need and it takes a while after it dies before these spaces are freed back up. There are no similar scenerios between different N-Bac species in the literature that I know of, just the different problem of N-Bacs not increasing as well in the presence of of high nitrite or nitrate, precisely the condition we are creating. High nitrite/nitrate inhibition of N-Bac growth though is a subtle effect and many fishless cycles can complete despite this. pH seems to be a stronger factor than high nitrogen.

The test tube cleaning point by anon02 was good too. I keep a gallon of distilled water among my bottles in case I want to do a special clean of my test tubes. For the vast majority of what we do tap water is fine of course, but there are times when I hope to see things about the tap water itself and use distilled water cleanouts to take away one more subtle factor.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[mark4785]

Re the second paragraph of your 19/11 post, I read that as you dosing ammonia which the a bacs reduce to nitrite which the n bacs are in insufficient numbers to deal with i.e. the nitrite spike ?

How are you cleaning your test tubes after testing

They are washed out with tap water and dry fully before I re-use.

Should I rinse my filtration media from this cycling tank in tap water and start again with the cycle? I ask this because I get the impression I've grown a rather strange colony of bacteria that does not process nitrite.

 

[anon02]

I would continue dosing 2ppm of ammonia at 24 hours and test all parameters at 12 and 24 hours to establish where the cycle is up to

As far as I`m aware the only other bacteria that thrives in a freshwater aquarium environment in any numbers is cyanobacter

Quite a few other posters have had the weird colours during cycling, patience is key

 

[OldMan47]

There are a huge number of bacterial species that will live just fine in a freshwater tank Anon. What we really know about the specific bacteria that are useful for our cycle is mostly on a very high level of knowing what family they belong to. There are literally dozens of species within each of those groups and I have not read anywhere that any one of them is better than another of its close cousins. The same bacterial families that we rely on for cycling are also present in ordinary garden soil so they are hardly difficult to find in nature.
As far as starting over, I would not do that once I am seeing any processing of ammonia or nitrite. Why throw away any progress that you have made in growing a useful bacterial culture? You need to focus instead on what you can do to improve the other component of your bacterial cultures. WD has given you a hint that has paid off for some people in the past. When you have trouble moving nitrites while you are seeing ammonia being processed well, it sometimes helps to do a 100% water change to remove the nitrite build up and start again in the sense of dosing 2 ppm of ammonia to see what you get. With all of the nitrite gone, the bacteria seem to respond well and may even prevent nitrites from going off-scale again.

 

[mark4785]

I just thought I'd update everyone on the fishless cycle progress.

I have not applied pure ammonia into the aquarium for 3 days in the hope that the nitrite level would start to reduce. I've tested my water parameters and I'm happy to see that the ammonia level is 0, nitrite is 0 and my nitrate has gone up to 80 ppm from 5-10 ppm after being converted from nitrite.

I've put 2.5ml of pure ammonia into the tank and I will test all water parameters 12 hours later to see what happens with the nitrite levels.

Once the tank is cycled I may place my male German Blue Ram (from main tank) into the tank and purchase a female to make a GBR pair. Would that be a reasonable stocking level for a 55 litre aquarium?

The reason I wish to transfer him is due to the fact that he continues to rub himself on the substrate and decor in the main aquarium and so I'm curious as to whether this behaviour will stop or not in a completely new environment. He is currently in a planted aquarium with c02 addition, plant nutrient dosing, a blue-green algae outbreak (cyanobacteria; can release toxins which irritate or kill fish) and a fairly obsolete filter system which is possibly failing to take in waste and detritus which falls onto the substrate; hence the reason why he only rubs himself towards the bottom of the aquarium where there could be pockets of ammonia.

 

[waterdrop]

I have not kept GBRs, so can only repeat what I've seen so many times before here on TFF, that they are quite sensitive to having really nice water stats (good solid biofilter producing steady zeros for ammonia and nitrite) including low nitrate from freqent gravel-clean-water-changes hopefully with low or zero nitrate from the conditioned tap water. (In other words, they respond well to someone who takes their weekly water changes seriously.)

I also will repeat our usual advice to beginners about stocking. Having a successful first couple of years can be greatly helped if you resist stocking beyond the rough one inch (roughly based on medium small fish and full adult size estimates from species sites) per US gallon guideline and work at learning good habits about weekly water changes and regular filter maintenance. Many will note that highly successful keepers like OM47 often do not take their stocking up to the inch guideline but stay below it in many cases.

One of the reasons that many of the experienced keepers you will encounter participating here on TFF will talk a lot about successful overstocking is that they have long ago internalized the behaviors that allow overstocking to not cause too many problems. They never fail to maintain their tanks well (or, in a few cases unfortunately, they are relying on the toughness of some species and the fact that observational symptoms are often not enough to know of problems.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[mark4785]

I have not kept GBRs, so can only repeat what I've seen so many times before here on TFF, that they are quite sensitive to having really nice water stats (good solid biofilter producing steady zeros for ammonia and nitrite) including low nitrate from freqent gravel-clean-water-changes hopefully with low or zero nitrate from the conditioned tap water. (In other words, they respond well to someone who takes their weekly water changes seriously.)

I also will repeat our usual advice to beginners about stocking. Having a successful first couple of years can be greatly helped if you resist stocking beyond the rough one inch (roughly based on medium small fish and full adult size estimates from species sites) per US gallon guideline and work at learning good habits about weekly water changes and regular filter maintenance. Many will note that highly successful keepers like OM47 often do not take their stocking up to the inch guideline but stay below it in many cases.

One of the reasons that many of the experienced keepers you will encounter participating here on TFF will talk a lot about successful overstocking is that they have long ago internalized the behaviors that allow overstocking to not cause too many problems. They never fail to maintain their tanks well (or, in a few cases unfortunately, they are relying on the toughness of some species and the fact that observational symptoms are often not enough to know of problems.)

~~waterdrop~~

I don't really have that knowledge of how to avoid ammonia poisoning or the forming of nitrites in cases of over stocking. This is because I've never overstocked. I was actually under the impression that a GBR pair would not be too much for a 60 (15.8 US gallons) litre aquarium (It's not a 55 litre aquarium; it's actually more 60 litres).

German Blue Rams grow to 7cm/2.8 inches. If I had a pair that would double up to 14cm/5.6 inches. So I'd need 5.6 US gallons or 18.93 litres for a GBR pair right?

 

[waterdrop]

Oh no, a 60L/16G would be fine for a pair and your calculations are right (although of course as Rams, you'd not really want to cramp them in a little quarantine tank like a 5G but in terms of water quality yes, their need would be similar but a bit above what their inch length would imply since they are also a wide fish... so maybe they'd be using up about 8 inches (= 8 US Gallons) out of your 16G, about half of your available stocking allowance I guess.) WD

 

[mark4785]

Oh no, a 60L/16G would be fine for a pair and your calculations are right (although of course as Rams, you'd not really want to cramp them in a little quarantine tank like a 5G but in terms of water quality yes, their need would be similar but a bit above what their inch length would imply since they are also a wide fish... so maybe they'd be using up about 8 inches (= 8 US Gallons) out of your 16G, about half of your available stocking allowance I guess.) WD

Ok,

Given that I wouldn't be over-stocking, i'm very eagar to place a GBR pair into the QT aquarium. This is mainly because it contains a pebble substrate as opposed to sand (sand is in my larger 120L tank). As you may know, the GBR seems to rub constantly in the larger tank when he is in close proximity to the substrate. So it'd be very interesting for me to observe him in an aquarium with a different substrate/environment to see if he still rubs himself or not. If he still rubs himself in the QT that will imply there's something wrong with him rather than the substrate.

If it wasn't for the rubbing I wouldn't really be hell-bent on putting him into a new environment which isn't as large.

 

[waterdrop]

I've now commented in your other thread Mark and sorry I don't know for sure. Perhaps you could PM Davo86 (hope I'm remembering the right Davo) or one of the other cichlid people, one of them might even spot a post in one of the cichlid specific subforums. WD

 

[mark4785]

I would continue dosing 2ppm of ammonia at 24 hours and test all parameters at 12 and 24 hours to establish where the cycle is up to

As far as I`m aware the only other bacteria that thrives in a freshwater aquarium environment in any numbers is cyanobacter

Quite a few other posters have had the weird colours during cycling, patience is key

You do mean 2ml right? That is equivalent to 4 ppm in a 60 litre aquarium.

I am now dosing 1.9ml of ammonia as the nitrite has stalled yet again and I'm conscious that the more ammonia I add, the longer it will take for that stall to correct itself.

Also, one thing I'd thought I'd note is the fact that I'm commonly finding a result of 0.25 ppm of ammonia every 24 hours after dosing 1.9ml of ammonia. This never occurred before I did the 90% W/C. Maybe my dechlorinater hasn't neutralised everything in the water that can cause beneficial bacteria to die off?