My Fishless Cycle

[scotty]

it's sitting about 80 at the minute

 

[waterdrop]

got to run at the moment but I think we should think about a water change

 

[scotty]

done a 100% waterchange 5 days ago

 

[LilyRose Tank]

hi scotty, is your ammonia clearing now?

 

[waterdrop]

Five days is pretty recent. This makes me guess that is basically just your colonies, especially the A-Bac colony right now that are still building their biofilm structures up to the point of maturity where we see them pass the test of the qualifying week.

[aside: It makes me feel pretty good that our "double-zero, then qualifying week" is still seeming to be a pretty good catch on the "usability level" of these colonies. To me, watching our dozen or so cases each month, its continuing to be a pretty good cheap analytical system for finding the earliest moment the biofilter can really usefully support a reasonable first bioload in the tank without collapsing into mini-cycling and water changes.

I've been occasionally finding articles on the ongoing research into the structure of biofilms and its surprising how primitive our scientific knowledge is in this area. Seems like one of the newer more active areas of work is studying the ability of the bacteria to form "channels" through which the ammonia carrying water can still move through the microscopic biofilm layer itself to allow support for a greater number of bacteria and yet still permit the biofilm to continue to provide mechanical and chemical protection for the particular species. One of the most complicated aspects of biofilms apparently is their ability or lack thereof for supporting their "maker" species at the expense of any competitor bacterial species that might be trying to get free rent so to speak.]

Anyway scotty, I don't see anything to make me think weekend water changes would necessarily make the situation better or worse. I think the colonies mostly just need a little more time in your case. The fact that nitrite(NO2) is still clearing to zero in 12 hours indicates to me that nitrate(NO3) is not getting so high (like 160ppm sort of levels) that we would have an obvious reason to want to water-change.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

well nitrite was at 5+ at 8pm last night,checked it at 8am this morning and it was down to 0.25,checked nitrates again,the colour is darker than the 80 but not as dark as the 160 if you know what i mean

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, I've often found it pretty difficult to tell the difference between the 80 and the 160 colors in my testtube, at least back when I passed through those kinds of numbers during cycling.

I'll have to go back and look at your first post log yet again as I thought we were getting double zeros for quite a while even at 12 hours but now...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

i was then it all changed for some reason or another,but hopefully getting back on track now,days 32-40 i didn't bother taking nitrite readings on these days,only ammonia one

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, your fishless cycle did not follow a very common path. You got your first ammonia drop faster than most, your NO2 appeared faster than most and then your nitrite spike period was quite a bit shorter than most and now after a very long stretch of looking like it was all going to be over it has collapsed back to looking not as far along! I really sympathize with you.

The good thing, at least from my point of view, is that having your fishless cycle actually doing stuff.. actually being able to get to zero ammonia frequently and put more in is a much, much better situation than the thing others find themselves in where stuff just won't move and the tank seems to just sit there! Yours keeps showing signs of coming around at any moment, its just unpredictable!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LilyRose Tank]

Hi Scotty, Hows things going now? on track yet x

 

[scotty]

Day 40-48 Ammonia and nitrite taking 24hrs to clear,nitrate seems to be steady about 80,just hoping it will drop down to 12hrs soon

 

[scotty]

well amonia dropped from 4ppm to 0.50ppm in 12hrs,and nitrite down to 0.25,so i suppose some progress

 

[waterdrop]

 

[LilyRose Tank]

hooray!!!!! brilliant, excellent and fab! xx

 

[scotty]

well nitrite dropped to 0 in 12hrs,but ammonia was still at 0.25,i thought the ammonia would drop to 0 before nitrite