Fishless Cycling

[fiki]

I had to leave my cycling tank while i went away for 2 days. To compensate I added ammonia to about 8ppm. Too bad... my tank was removing nitrite and ammonia in under 12 hours.

After I came back it appeard that the nh4 was at 1.0 ppm... perfect... maybe a couple hours and it willbe at 0... However - the nh4 hasn't changed since sunday - and I'm a little worried that I overwhelmed the bacteria and caused them to die... That being said - how did my tank reduce nh4 down to 1.0 ppm... then freeze...

0.o

 

[mark.w.jones]

I had to leave my cycling tank while i went away for 2 days. To compensate I added ammonia to about 8ppm. Too bad... my tank was removing nitrite and ammonia in under 12 hours.

After I came back it appeard that the nh4 was at 1.0 ppm... perfect... maybe a couple hours and it willbe at 0... However - the nh4 hasn't changed since sunday - and I'm a little worried that I overwhelmed the bacteria and caused them to die... That being said - how did my tank reduce nh4 down to 1.0 ppm... then freeze...

0.o

Raise it back up to 5ppm again and see what happens. 8ppm is a bit high but no research has proved conlusively that it does anything to inhibit bacterial growth, it probably just slowed things up a bit that all. Good Luck

 

[fiki]

ehhh -

I'm a little skeptical of putting more ammonia in the tank because I kinda want it to go down... what would happen if the nh4 stayed at say... 5.00ppm after I raise it hypothetically

 

[Majjie]

What's the nitrate level - if that's astronomically high it could be slowing things down. You could do a big water change, add a little ammonia and see what happens.

 

[Lucylou]

Check you pH, if it drops below 7, chances are it will stall your good bacteria. if it has try adding a tiny bit of bicarbonate of soda to raise it up. This happened to mine twice while cycling and it worked for me.

 

[Irf]

ehhh -

I'm a little skeptical of putting more ammonia in the tank because I kinda want it to go down... what would happen if the nh4 stayed at say... 5.00ppm after I raise it hypothetically

Yes, the objective is to reduce the ammonia, but naturally. If the bacteria are still doing their job then the ammonia will reduce in a day or so. If not, then for some reason the cycle may have stalled.

It will be a worthwhile test....

Irf.

 

[fiki]

pH - 6.0
Ammonia - 1.0ppm (STILL GAHH)
Nitrite - .5ppm
Nitrate - 5.0-10.0ppm ( kinda low)

Oh and its a 5g so it was pretty ready to stock - but I had to go away ><

and where would i get that bicarbonate - sounds cheaper than pH raiser or something....

thanks

 

[Irf]

The stats you quote are not too bad. Personally I think that a mini-cycle has somehow started, and that's why you still have a nitrite reading as well. Could be wrong though.

I believe Bicarbonate of Soda (from supermarkets) is good enough, but I've never personally tried it.

A 5g tank is going to react pretty quickly to any changes in chemistry, and so you should be very careful about adding chemicals to influence pH etc. I agree that the pH is lower than idea (depending on what you want to keep in the tank), but perhaps a steadeir method would be better, like putting stuff in the filtr media - perhaps somone else can advise?

Irf.

 

[mark.w.jones]

pH always fluctuates during a fishless cycle. I don't think 6.0 is too horrendous either, certainly not bad enough to warrant fiddling around with bicarbonate of soda. How do you know how much to add? I still advise that you raise your ammonia level back up to 5ppm. If your tank is not able to get rid of 5ppm ammonia in 24 hours then it has not finished cycling so you may have a week or so to go yet.