My Tank Cycling For 1 Month So Far

[LosC519]

My tank has been cycling for almost a month now. Im concerned because the water I take out is very yellow and smelly each time I do a water change. MY ammonia has been steady at 0 for awhile, my nitrites recently stabilized at 0 and my nitrates are at 5. My question is: Can the Nitrates slowly kill my fish? And whats gonna happen next with my water? Is my cycling close to complete? BTW, I keep up with my water changes 25% every other day and 50% once a week. My filter media is looking pretty bad also. Its Brown and seems a bit clogged. What should I do? I dont want to kill or slow down the cycle if I wash it.

 

[littlest]

I'm assuming you are cycling with fish already in the tank as you are doing daily water changes?
If ammonia is staying at 0 and nitrite is staying at zero, you are cycled.
Keep an eye on the levels for a while. If either ammonia or nitrite creep up above zero do a water change, other than that you can just do weekly water changes of around 25 per cent. (depending on your stocking load you may have to do more or could do less).

Nitrate of 5 is no problem to fish at all. Nitrate will build up over the week but will then be removed through your regular water changes. It's rare for nitrates to harm fish (though some species are sensitive to it). There are even some threads around showing research that nitrates of up to 400ppm don't harm fish.

As for the yellow water.. do you have any bogwood in the tank? Bogwood can leach tanins into the water turning it yellow. It's harmless to fish but a lot of people don't like the look of it. To avoid it, soak the bogwood in a bucket of water for a couple of weeks.

The smell is a bit more worrying. A healthy tank shouldn't smell bad. Could you describe it all?

Brown filter media isn't a problem but if it is clogging up your filter and reducing the flow, next water change take the media out and give a bit of of a swish in a bucket of tank water to clean it a bit. Don't use tap water on it (that will kill the bacteria) and don't scrub it or anything. Probably best only to do a bit at a time (if you have multiple sponges).

What size is your tank and how many (and what type) of fish do you have?

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I can't add much to what littlest has already said. It does sound as if you are now cycled. What type filter do you have that is getting clogged and what type media are you running (sponges, ceramic rings/noodles, etc.)?

 

[Colin_T]

increasing aeration/ surface turbulence could help with the smell but as mentioned by littlest, a healthy tank shouldn't smell bad. Make sure you siphon out any uneaten food and do a gravel clean each time you do a water change.

 

[LosC519]

Boy am I glad to hear that, my cycling is complete. I have a 20 gallon freshwater tank with a aquamaster 250 running on it. I have 1 male betta, 2 peppered corys and 2 bronze corys. I lost 2 pandas 4 days ago unfortunately, I felt awful to put my fish through the cycling process. When I got my tank and my fish I knew nothing about cycling. I learned alot from the aquatic community forums. In my tank I have driftwood ( which explains the yellow water, I didn't rinse it too much because I wanted the tannins to lower my pH a bit), fake plants a floating plant and a rock/coral/ cave ornament. Now for the smell I'm not sure, I smelt too much fish waste coming from the water but maybe thats the way the water is suppose to smell, like fish! Heres a pic of my tank. I plan on getting a school of neon tetras and a german blue ram next.

 

[Colin_T]

a healthy tank should smell a bit like damp freshly cut grass. Not unpleasant.