Is It To Fast? (Cycle Log)

[oneblondebrow]

Hi all,

Long story short i have some old media in my filter for my new 17 liter tank that had a very low to none existent bio load for around 3 weeks, All i had in the tank was 1 amano shrimp and i added some flake food every day, Anyway i have took the shrimp out (put him in my big community tank) completely cleaned the 17 liter tank/substrate and6 days ago i added just over 1ml of Ammonia and below is the readings so far.....

day 1 8ppm Ammonia 0ppm nitrite
day 2 8ppm Ammonia(although lighter) .25ppm Nitrite
day 3 8ppm Ammonia .25ppm Nitrite
day 4 8ppm Ammonia .25ppm Nitrite
day 5 8ppm Ammonia(lighter again) 1ppm Nitrite

day 6 4ppm Ammonia 5PPM Nitrite?

Now where i have put 8ppm means it could be higher, I was aiming for 5ppm but added to much accidently but not by a lot, Anyway suddenly on the 6th day the Ammonia has dropped and the NitrIte has shot up to 5ppm which is the max my test can handle, Should i now start testing for NitrAtes? Are my NitrItes going to start coming down or do i need a better test kit (currently have the API one) to test for higher amounts?

Thanks

 

[JoshuaA]

Hey there!

Firstly I would check using the calculator at the top of this website to calculate how much ammonia you actually added. 8ppm is far too high and not recommended there is evidence to suggest the wrong type of bacteria forms in such high concentrations of ammonia and you won't benefit from them in the future.

I wouldn't say it is too soon to see your Nitrite beginning to spike and for each 1ppm of ammonia around 2.7ppm Nitrite is produced so it doesn't take much ammonia to cause an unreadable Nitrite result. I would avoid testing Nitrate at all during your cycle as it is heavily effected by the Nitrite levels and is generally inaccurate anyway.

Finally if you had added too much ammonia it would of probably been best to remove it by doing a large water change if 8ppm a 50% would of sufficed to bring it to a recommended level. However at this stage you may be best of just continuing on with what you are doing, just be aware 5ppm is usually the recommended amount. I'm shocked how fast the Nitrite made an appearance though, it would be useful if you were to post your tap water parameters too!

Good Luck

 

[OldMan47]

With a cloned filter, 6 days is not especially fast to have an ammonia response. It is the reason that we encourage a filter clone when a donor filter can be found. In my own case, I clone filters from my older tanks and am often done with a full cycle in that amount of time.

 

[oneblondebrow]

Just tested water again and now only got 0.50ppm of Ammonia but with 5PPM Nitrite (max reading) so it would seem i am well and truly into my Nitrite spike.

 

[OldMan47]

Congrats. Now you will start dosing about 2 ppm daily until the nitrite spike finishes. That could take a very few days to happen if you got a good clone.