Grrr Nitirite Won't Cycle!

[ArauraDiscus]

I've had my new discus tanbk up and running for over a month!!!!!!!!!!!. The ammonia is at 0, Nitrite 5.0, and Nitrate 60. It's been fishless cycling forever. The Nitrite just isn't going down. Obviously it's converted some Nitrite to nitrate, but shouldn't it have converted all of it by now? I have a canister filter Rena xp3 with tons of biological media that I inserted, especially meant to help nitrite and nitrate. My ph is 6.6, General hardness 75, Kh/Alkalinity 300. I add discus buffer to alkalinize my water and lower the ph, it also precipitates calcium and magnesium. I also put food in the tank from time to time to create waste. What could be making this cycle take so ridiculously long?

Could the water perameters be hindering the growth of the bacteria? Should I put it at a diffferent Ph until they grow, and then lower the ph once they are established?

 

[-germ-]

Umm...
You know me, everythings a guess etc.
But all the seachem products i've used (excluding purigen) have given me haywire ammonia, nitrite, nitrate readings.
It may just be the filter pads that are designed to deal with this are actually hindering your bacterial build up....
Then again it might just be bad luck.
Make sure theres plenty of oxygen for the bacteria and i'd contact seachem and see if the buffer maybe interfering.
If your using seachem dechlor (prime) then i'd hazard a guess and say it is definately that....
Probably useless info, hope it helps if not....

 

[ArauraDiscus]

Yeah I may end up calling them to find out. The only seachem product I use is discus buffer though. ANd the canister filter should be getting some oxygen in there, I hope.

 

[ArauraDiscus]

Damn me, i found the problem i think. I had been adding methylene blue recently as in an emergency I needed to treat a molly for a fungal infection over a span of 4 days. Apparenlty, after reading up on some different cycling articles, Methylene Blue is the worst medicine to add to a cycling tank. It completely halts the conversion of nitrite to nitrate, which is exactly what I seem to be having problems with. Gosh I'm an Idgit. Mollies fine now btw.

 

[rdd1952]

In a cycling tank during a fishless cycle, the nitrite should be off the chart high basically from the time your ammonia drops back to zero the first time until it finally drops back to zero overnight. If you are doing a fishless cycle and have a readable nitrite level, then you aren't or haven't built much ammonia processing bacteria yet and aren't adding enough ammonia. After the ammonia has dropped back to zero a couple times, the filter should be able to process 4 or 5 ppm twice a day. This leads to a lot of nitrite so the level will go off the chart pretty quickly. It builds so high that as the nitrite processing bacteria continues to multiply and double, it finally gets to the point that when it doubles that one last time, the nitrite goes from something like 50ppm to zero overnight, thus the drop from off the chart to zero all at once.

One other issue that will inhibit the bacteria reproduction is the pH level. The lower the pH the slower reproduction becomes. According to this article, reproduction slows to to just under 30%effeciency at pH 6.5 so you aren't seeing a lot of development.