In Need Of Help With Cyclying

[mdk2424]

Hi every one
I am in need of some help!
I have a 29 gal tank fresh water with 20 fish set up now for 4 weeks. Yes i ran out got a tank with fish not Knowing about cycling. I am testing the tank with API test kit also i have a Aqua clear 70 & 50 the 50 is filled with bio balls and bio beads and a sponge. on my 3rd week after reading severl posting on this site i found a pet shop that sold me filter media out of one of there tanks to use in mine. Every thing looked ok as far as the cycle charts mine was close to till the 4 th week. HELP

1 week
ammonina 2.0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
Ph 7.0

2 week
ammonina 2.0 went up to 3.0 started to do water changes
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
PH 7.0
Raised temp to 81
3 week
Ammonina 3.0 up to 4.0 still doing water changes
Added filter media
nitrite .25 up to .50 last day of the week up to 1ppm
nitrate 5
PH 7.0 Every thing looking good so far i thought

4 week
ammonina 3.0 to 4.0 still doing W/C about 12 gal DAILY
nitrite GONE 0
nitrate GONE 0
PH 6.6

WHAT HAPPEND AM I STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN I HAVED TRY BIOZMYE AND SEACHEM STIBILTY.
PLEASE SOME ONE ANYONE HELP ME I AM TRYING TO DO MUCH RESEARCH ON THIS SITE AND OTHERS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HOBBY, BUT I AM GETTING FUSSTRATED THE PET SHOP IN MY AREA TOLD ME I WAS DOING EVERY THING WRONG BY DOING WATER CHANGES BUT I HAVE BEEN TAKING THE ADVICE OF PEOPLE ON THIS SITE.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Oh I'm sorry to hear you're having problems, the process of a fish-in cycle is really very stressful and is by far the worst aspect of fishkeeping. trust me when you get past it everything is a lot easier and much more fun.

just to clear a few things up, what you are trying to achieve when you are fish-in cycling is bacteria growth, you need to cultivate the bacteria to eat up all the fish waste. These species of bacteria do not live free swimming in the water, they cling onto surfaces such as the filter media. So doing water changes does not remove the bacteria, all it does is dilute the ammonia and nitrite which are toxic.

I think you're getting such high ammonia levels because you have an awful lot of fish in for a fish-in cycle, usually people have a lot less. Because you have so many fish in at this stage you're getting more ammonia produced than normal and as such you need to be doing much bigger water changes than you are.

You need to do as many large water changes as it takes to get both ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm, so each day test the water and write down the readings, then do a 50% water change, leave it 1 hr and then test the water again, if you've still got ammonia or nitrite over 0.25ppm then you need to do another 50% water change and keep doing this until you get below this point. After a few days of this you'll get a feel of how much water you need to change each day and you can just start out by changing that percentage rather than having to wait and re-test and do two changes.

it's very difficult to get an accurate trend from weekly reporting of the numbers, have you got the stats from each day written down? Can you post them up please as that will help us enormously.

Has anything else changed in your tank, did you clean the filter or change some of the media? Did any fish die?

 

[mdk2424]

Thanks 'Miss Wiggle' for reply
yes i started a log and will post later.
the 1st week 4 fish did die.
realy not much has changed been doing w/c every few days i was able to get filter media from a tank set up at the pet shop on the 3rd week.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

OK, look forward to the log later on then, we'll hopefully make some more sense of it from then. If you can include along with your results the dates that fish died, mature media was added, water changes were done..... any of the goings on in the tank at that point.

Can you please also post a full list of the species that you have and how many of each species?

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there mdk and wecome to the beginner section!

It sounds like you are very proactive and have been courageous in trying to do the right thing despite the LFS telling you otherwise and I applaud you! You ARE heading in the right direction!

One thing I need to ask right away is whether you are -adding- ammonia to the tank? The description sounds a little like that could be the case so we need to rule it out. You should NOT be adding any ammonia at all during a "Fish-In" cycle, which is what you're in of course.

Since you have 20 fish in a 29 gallon that is not cycled, you're in a pretty dire situation. The waste that that many fish can produce will make it very hard to keep up with (since basically what fish-in cycling is is having to manually flush the toilet for them multiple times a day in some cases!) You should sustain an attempt to re-home some or all of the fish either to some other hobbyist or back to any store that might take them. Personally I would go for the friendly, humorous approach with your store and emphasize that you will continue to be a customer and might even buy the fish back, possibly paying twice! (luckily, you'll have us here who will know how angry you are underneath, to blow off steam!)... but any success in this will pay off well in lessening your work.

OK, enough of that 'cause it probably won't work out, right? So back to the Fish-In cycle: Don't let anyone tell you that the water changes are not the most important thing! They are. Whenever there is ammonia and/or nitrite(NO2) in the water at more than, say, 0.25ppm then that poison/toxin situation -trumps- all other concerns for the moment. The most important thing becomes water changing that poison out of there, and often that means large percentage and frequent changes.

Of course the way you do a water change is a skill too. When you take it out you want to be using your siphon head to clean the gravel to help remove some of the debris from those 20 fish, because that debris is one of the big contributors to the ammonia and other toxins. When you replace the water you of course want to use a good dechlorination/dechloramination product in the right dosage to condition the water and you want to roughly temperature match (using your hand is good enough) because your changes are probably going to be 70% and 50% type changes as you seek the magic zero ppm for ammonia and nitrite. A Python type siphon product will greatly assist in the water changes over the next month.

And it does indeed usually average about a month to get a filter cycled with a Fish-In situation, so you have to settle into patience and routine (you can check out Lana's thread on here for a recent example.)

So just to sum up: You've got a good test kit. You are measuring ammonia, nitrite and pH with it morning and evening. Your goal is to find a pattern of frequency and large percentage of water changes that will keep both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) as close to zero with it hopefully not rising over 0.25ppm before the next chance to water change. Nitrates(NO3) are not something you need to worry about at all at this point because you'll be water changing it all out. You will need to dedicate yourself to this for at least a month (possibly 2) (unless, of course, you luck out with a way to re-home the fish and switch to a fishless cycle.)

Good luck and ask away with all the questions (the members here are great and enjoy the questions.)
~~waterdrop~~

 

[mdk2424]

Thanks alot waterdrop
i just picked up some filter media from a tank that has been running for a year now and will be putting it in right after my 2 water change today. and no have not been adding ammonia to the tank. Thanks for the info and i do consider myself as a newbie even though i used to be in the hobby 18 years ago which back then i had tropical, oscars, & saltwater fish setups but so much has changed and to be honst i forgot a lot of the basics.

Also should i be cleaning the gravel or just taken out the water?

 

[waterdrop]

Its considered standard practice now to remove water by using a siphon that has a wide-mouthed, stiff, clear, cylindrical tube that allows you to plunge it into the gravel, stir it around and have the gravel churn up a ways into the cylinder. This causes the debris that was lying amongst the gravel to float up into the outgoing stream of water slowly rising and then shooting off through the siphon hose. This way a greater amount of debris goes out with the water than would otherwise.

Now, in the situation that you're in, doing a Fish-In cycle on a tank that, while not huge, is not really small, we can't pretend for a moment that you'll always have time to do a thorough cleaning with each water change because you'll be doing so many. But to the extent that you can make yourself do this, it will be good. Your frequent (probably at least 50% daily) water changes will be to get the ammonia and nitrite down and the debris in the gravel will be part of what's contributing to those.

Oh, and another thing: Go light on your feeding. Tropical fish can make it fine being fed every other day, or even every third day off and on. What I do is to change it up sort of randomly so that sometimes they get fed the very next day, sometimes two days later or occassionally not til the third day. This is good practice in feeding technique anyway and is especially helpful during this month when you don't have a cycled filter.

Oh, and you'll eventually be wondering what your goal will be as you get nearer the end of the month. The goal is for the filter to be able to hold the tank at zero ammonia and nitrite for 2 days running -without- you having to do any water changes. Obviously you'll reach the point of it making it for one day first, then a little later it will manage 2 days and at that point you can considered yourself cycled and stop the water changes and just continue the intense testing for another week and then ease the testing down to weekly for a while.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[mdk2424]

once again waterdrop for the great info THANK YOU! i will report back saturday morning i just did my second water change and cleand the gravel very good ( alot of crap came up) my amoniana is at 1ppm right now 2 hrs after W/C alot better than 3.0 or 4.0 Thanks and keep up with the great info for people like me ( NEWBIE'S )

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes if there's a lot of waste coming out of the gravel then that will be contributing to the problem, as WD said don't feel like you need to do a thorough gravel vac at every single water change, but try and do it every 2nd or third change or something like that for now to keep it super clean in there.

all the waste will be creating extra ammonia and nitrite

 

[OldMan47]

If your ammonia only came down to 1 ppm, it's time to do another change MDK. The ammonia needs to be down below 0.25 ppm for the health of the fish. That parameter is more important to your fish than any stress you might cause with the water change. I have had situations where I had to do 3 or 4 water changes in the same evening to get a tank's chemistry under control. It doesn't happen to me any more but I have been there. The fish that had looked pretty bad before I started were downright perky when I got done and my water parameters were good.

 

[mdk2424]

Ok I now have the ammonina down to 0ppm i will be trying to keep it in control but the ? is am i starting the cycle over again i still don't have nitrites or nitrates which i did have last week also friday i did add that filter media from another tank that was already been running for a year or so.

 

[dcarmor927]

Ok I now have the ammonina down to 0ppm i will be trying to keep it in control but the ? is am i starting the cycle over again i still don't have nitrites or nitrates which i did have last week also friday i did add that filter media from another tank that was already been running for a year or so.

I dont think so, i think you just did enough water changes that it appears that way, ammonia should go up soon, along with nitrites...the bacteria just needs to get workin, i'm doing a fish in cycle now too, with 9 fish in a 55 gal...soon the ammonia will drop off and nitrites will take over...

 

[OldMan47]

One of the beauties of using mature filter media is that you can and sometimes do get very quickly to a point that your filter can handle your fish load. If you do not see ammonia or nitrites and do see the nitrates climbing, you may have gotten there. In that case, as long as the donor media stays in the filter, you will be fine. My guess at that point would be that the donor media is well developed and is taking care of the tank while the new media gradually develops its needed bacterial colony. Over time all of the media will get plenty of bacteria growing on it but that can't happen over night.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, as OM47 says, if your mature media that you added to help seed your filter has successfully taken hold, then that is a wonderful thing, sometimes even taking you to the end of the cycling process very quickly.

One way to tell that you are at the -end- of the fish-in cycling process is to observe zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite for two full days running without having performed any water changes whatsoever. If your filter can accomplish this then you can feel that the end has probably been reached and observe test results closely for another week, making sure you haven't been fooled.

~~waterdrop~~