Fishless Cycle Log

[Diesel Trout]

Day 43 morning ammonia check and still 1.0 ppm! Considering I did not add any ammonia last night I am very surprised that there is still some present.

My only guess would be that I should not have removed the mature media three days ago. It was a carbon insert from an Aquaclear 20 so I really didn't think it would have an effect on the colony since it was just a small component. I guess since my Fluval bacteria colony hasn't reached maturity any small change can have a large impact.

 

[waterdrop]

I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes as the nitrite begins to perform better, the ammonia seems to get worse for a while, but it eventually gets better again. If it ends up being a 60 to 70 day cycle or so then somewhere out closer to that you will see the ammonia finally begin dropping strongly again. Its true that additions/removals of media can make a bigger difference in young, cycling filters than if they were mature.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Diesel Trout]

I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes as the nitrite begins to perform better, the ammonia seems to get worse for a while, but it eventually gets better again. If it ends up being a 60 to 70 day cycle or so then somewhere out closer to that you will see the ammonia finally begin dropping strongly again. Its true that additions/removals of media can make a bigger difference in young, cycling filters than if they were mature.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks waterdrop. I was getting excited about seeing ammonia and nitrites coming down together only to see ammonia take a turn for the worse. I am nothing if not patient by nature so I will hang in there. Luckily the fish in my 15 gallon cannot see their new home to be!

 

[waterdrop]

I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes as the nitrite begins to perform better, the ammonia seems to get worse for a while, but it eventually gets better again. If it ends up being a 60 to 70 day cycle or so then somewhere out closer to that you will see the ammonia finally begin dropping strongly again. Its true that additions/removals of media can make a bigger difference in young, cycling filters than if they were mature.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks waterdrop. I was getting excited about seeing ammonia and nitrites coming down together only to see ammonia take a turn for the worse. I am nothing if not patient by nature so I will hang in there. Luckily the fish in my 15 gallon cannot see their new home to be!

Yeah, they'd be shouting and pointing

 

[Diesel Trout]

Days up to and including today Day 45 are now updated.

Things are slowly chugging along. There were a few days there where the ammonia has been processing slowly so I did not add any more ammonia at my 24 hour mark.

Plants are hanging in there, although don't seem to be growing. I am adding Flourish every three days. I lowered the filter return outlet into the water as there was quite a lot of surface agitation and lots of bubbles going into the tank. From searching this site I am to believe that too much surface agitation results in CO2 escaping which may be hindering my plant growth (even more so since I am not adding CO2). We'll see if this helps.

 

[OldMan47]

If you are adding artificial CO2 to enhance the levels, you will lose some through too much water flow at the surface. If you are relying on environmental sources of CO2 , you will do better if you get a good gas exchange at the surface by proper surface agitation. Plant people will always assume that you have been artificially adding CO2 when they give advice. If you actually want to grow your plants faster, you need to figure out what may be missing in terms of fertility for the plants and add that one component. It could be light, nitrogen (unlikely), phosphorus, potassium or trace elements that is the present limiting factor. Once you figure out what is the limiting factor, adding just that component will get the plants growing rapidly.

 

[Diesel Trout]

If you are adding artificial CO2 to enhance the levels, you will lose some through too much water flow at the surface. If you are relying on environmental sources of CO2 , you will do better if you get a good gas exchange at the surface by proper surface agitation. Plant people will always assume that you have been artificially adding CO2 when they give advice. If you actually want to grow your plants faster, you need to figure out what may be missing in terms of fertility for the plants and add that one component. It could be light, nitrogen (unlikely), phosphorus, potassium or trace elements that is the present limiting factor. Once you figure out what is the limiting factor, adding just that component will get the plants growing rapidly.

Here's a dumb question: how do I know which component I am lacking? Can I test for these?

 

[waterdrop]

If you are adding artificial CO2 to enhance the levels, you will lose some through too much water flow at the surface. If you are relying on environmental sources of CO2 , you will do better if you get a good gas exchange at the surface by proper surface agitation. Plant people will always assume that you have been artificially adding CO2 when they give advice. If you actually want to grow your plants faster, you need to figure out what may be missing in terms of fertility for the plants and add that one component. It could be light, nitrogen (unlikely), phosphorus, potassium or trace elements that is the present limiting factor. Once you figure out what is the limiting factor, adding just that component will get the plants growing rapidly.

Here's a dumb question: how do I know which component I am lacking? Can I test for these?

There may be plant folks out there that test with kits but in my experience this is considered hopeless due to the individual tests being too inaccurate or the cost in money or time being too much (disregarding some of the main plant nutrients like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, coming from CO2 or water, there'd still be a dozen or more individual tests.) Instead, as in other horticultural areas, growers pay attention to the major macronutrients (N, P, K) and then lump the others together and refer to them as micronutrients or "traces." There is also the problem that calculating how much of a given nutrient your current set of growing plants needed at a given moment (remember, its dynamic because they are growing) would be next to impossible. There is a much more useful and popular approach to this problem. Its called "estimative index" (EI) and its outlined in detail in the planted section pinned articles or links. Basically, you calculate up estimates for taking the macros and micros a little above what could be needed and then consider your weekly water change to be the "reset" that guarantees that an excess of any given nutrient won't be happening. EI is mostly a high-light technique but can be performed also in some low-light approaches. Additionally, there is one more thing I should mention. A big part of learning about plants in your tank is learning to equate various symtoms that you see as being due to deficiencies in specific nutrients. For the most common ones this is not very hard and of course most of us are helped along by the very knowleageable members over in the planted forum.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Diesel Trout]

Day 48 updated at the top of this thread.

Not much change. Nitrites are being processed fairly quickly, but ammonia is taking 2 days to get through 4 ppm.

Plants continue to look crappy. I added an API root tab to the base of the sword plants to give them the macro elements they require. My LFS had very limited supply of ferts so as far as mixing up a batch of NPK I would have to order those on-line i guess.

 

[OldMan47]

That is what I do for my higher tech planted tanks. I use dry fertilizers from on line sources including the big 3 plus a product called CSM+B which is a dry trace element mix. There is a place in Oregon that sells them and Rex Grigg sells them too. My low tech NPT gets the fertilizer in the form of fish food and fish wastes. I am afraid it does better than the rest of my planted tanks but is not quite as lush and dark green as the high tech tank.

 

[Diesel Trout]

Day up to and including 53 updated.

Not much to report on the progress front. Taking about 36 hours or less to process 4 ppm of ammonia. Getting frustrated that it is taking so long since it looked like success was imminent a couple weeks ago. Was really expecting to have fish in by now!

 

[waterdrop]

You're looking fine from where I sit. You're past the nitrite spike phase and into the long final random sticking phase where it keeps looking like it could be zero at 12 hours all the time but bounces around instead. This is typical of our people who seem to finish up a lot of times between days 60 and 70 (or 100 days in a very few cases.)

If you have plants that are failing and breaking down some then that will cause your ammonia readings to get more random sometimes.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Diesel Trout]

You're looking fine from where I sit. You're past the nitrite spike phase and into the long final random sticking phase where it keeps looking like it could be zero at 12 hours all the time but bounces around instead. This is typical of our people who seem to finish up a lot of times between days 60 and 70 (or 100 days in a very few cases.)

If you have plants that are failing and breaking down some then that will cause your ammonia readings to get more random sometimes.

~~waterdrop~~

The plants seem to have stabilized (i.e not dying off anymore) so that is a good thing. I have basically had to trim them back to just a few leafs (swords are the exception except for some brown spots) but they don't seem to be melting away any more.

Obviously I am not giving up, I just don't know how to keep explaining the empty tank to my friends!

 

[OldMan47]

The tank is not empty DT, it is a water garden.

 

[waterdrop]

The tank is not empty DT, it is a water garden.

I like that one.

You can engage a surprising number of people by dropping right down into the details of the two bacterial species in conversation. After a few sentences, people realize you are serious and begin to either pay attention and engage or of course there are some you lose right away. It did become a bit of amusement sport between some of my relatives and friends asking me whether there were any fish yet while they were in each other's presence. I didn't mind giving them material for their entertainment.

~~waterdrop~~