Have I Messed Up My Cycling?

[zesty]

It is not unusual to see a good response of nitrites after a big mid-cycle water change. I wish I knew if that was because the high nitrites were somehow impacting the ability of the nitrospira to grow their colony or if it was just our ability to monitor that is affected. Face it, if you have nitrites at 150 ppm and can get it down, 2 things happen. First is that you can measure the nitrites and you may have been removing 10 ppm every day and now that levels are below 10 ppm, it suddenly looks like the bacteria have had a population explosion. The other thing that could be happening is that the nitrite processors are really being inhibited by the high concentration and by reducing it you have freed them to reproduce. I really wish I knew which answer is correct but I am not ready to put myself through a fresh fishless cycle on 2 experimental tanks just to find out.

I understand what your saying. Should know more next time I test, fingers crossed the water change has helped allow the bacteria some room to multiply but I wont get my hopes up too much just yet.
I did use some "mature" media so am hoping the my cycle wont drag on too long.

Will update findings later.

Thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Hovanec has said in discussion that high nitrates(NO3) will have an inhibitory effect on Nitrospira development but has not said the same about nitrites(NO2.) Although I wouldn't be too surprised if it was found that very high NO2 also somehow had some slow-down effect, I suspect most of the "kickstart" behavior we think we see is due to what OM says above about simply us "seeing" how much they are eating for the first time after a water change.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rediahs]

Yes... I am not sure which one it really is... it could be that it's just easier to read and measure, or maybe, just like high levels of ammonia and nitrate, high levels of nitrite also inhibit the bacteria. I don't think it's too outlandish an idea since we know that high levels of NH3 and NO3 both do it, why not NO2? Probably a high level of anything would inhibit them.

 

[waterdrop]

Right, well we know that particular conditions make a big difference in how they do. They need that water flow with oxygen and just the right amount of ammonia (the A-Bacs in particular we know will be outcompeted by a different species up around 8ppm.) We know that whatever goes on with the N-Bacs is not as much of a problem as high ammonia is with the A-Bacs, but there could easily be things we don't know since there's little incentive for anybody to do science on this particular stuff.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[zesty]

ok, I have just done another test.

48 hours ago ammonia was 0 nitrites were off the chart, I then did a 90% water change and added 5ppm ammonia
36 hours ago ammonia was 0 nitrites were 5ppm
24 hours ago ammonia was 0 nitrites were 0
12 hours ago ammonia was .25 nitrites were 5ppm
Now ammonia 0 nitrites 0

So its been 48 hours since my water change and in that time I have measured zero nitrite over a 24hour period on two occasions.

I feel, rightly or wrongly that the water change has helped. At no time before changing the water was I able to not have the nitrite test turn purple instantly in the test tube. When I did my 30% water change a few days ago I still couldnt get an ammonia reading.

Lets hope that its not too much longer before I get zero readings every 12 hours.

Thanks

 

[OldMan47]

It sounds like you are making good progress Zesty. Now all we need to do is start seeing the zero ammonia at 12 hours consistently and the nitrites staying at zero for that reading.

 

[waterdrop]

Right zesty, good luck, you're headed toward double-zeros at 12 hours as the next milestone