Frustration

[gems]

Hi everyone,

my boyfriend is becoming very frustrated with our cycling tank. Yesterday it looked as though we would be ready to add fish today, our ammonia stats were going from 4ppm down to 0ppm in 24 hours with no nitrites. However, another 24 hours after bumping the ammonia back up to 4ppm it is taking much longer to drop. At about midnight last night it was at around 0.50ppm, and this morning it was still at that level and doesn't seem to be dropping. What's happened to stall the cycle?

 

[dwarfgourami]

What test kit are you using? Are you adding the same amount of ammonia every time?

 

[gems]

Yes, adding same amount of ammonia every time to keep bumping it up to 4ppm (we are going by advice given in post about two different methods of fishless cycling by rdd1952). Test kit is from Aqua Pharmaceuticals.We are also cycling with filter media from a previous tank, it was only established for about a month or so though.

 

[dwarfgourami]

Oh dear, not sure I can explain this. How long have you been at it?

 

[Edge]

We've been at it for around 3 weeks, but as my beloved mentioned the filter was running for 4 weeks prior to that with fish in it, so we had bacteria built up already, just not quite enough for the fish we had. So we started again using fishless cycling and all was well. We were going to stock our tank tonight but now I'm not so sure. Seems to have stalled. We do have a lot of snails emerging from our plants, would this affect it?