Nearly Done Its Painful

[Wills]

Hi been cycling my tank for about a month now. For the past 3 days I have had 5ppm ammonia to 0ppm ammonia and 0ppm nitrite in under 12 hours constantly however tonight at 12th hour I have a reading of 1ppm nitrite 0ppm ammonia - today my plant order arrived and I have now nearly fully planted my tank just need to get a big mother plant for the background. So all I can think of is that this has disturbed something?

This is a really big blow as I had reserved some fish to pick up tomorrow afternoon after I do the big water change. But now I am at a total loss of what to do. The fish in question are Honduran Red Points (kind of like an electric blue convict but without the aggression). I have added tonights dose of ammonia and will test on 12th hour tomorrow do you think if this comes clear I will still be ok to go for these fish?

So gutted this has shown up we were so excited.

If people could advise before 1:30pm GMT would be fantastic as this is the time of my next test so its kind of the pivotal point i guess.

 

[cowboy507]

i can only guess that the new additions to the tank have done this?

i am assuming no ammonia readings?

 

[Wills]

yeah the ammonia readings were yellow so 0ppm at 12 hour

do you think the bio load will be sufficient to safely add these 2 fish? The male is about 2and a half and the female is about 2 inches and quite a stocky fish. If I did get them I would wait a good amount of time before adding any more....I really cant decided can someone do it for me - Ill post the 12 hour readings across lunch time. see what its like

 

[Bobtastic]

You would probably be alright add the 2 fish in to the tank, but you're effectively switching from a Fishless cycle to a Fish-in cycle. Once they are added you will have to continue checking the waters states regularly and carry out large(ish) water changes if the ammonia and/or nitrites are above 0.25 ppm.

 

[Wills]

yeah I would be testing continuously I am off uni at the moment and bored out my mind lol so the water changes will make a nice change I intend to be very very vigilant with tank maintenance. But after reflection I think I am fairly confident that the tank can handle these 2 its currently running at 10x filtration - need to get some spray bars actually because other wise they are just going to be pinned down lol. Thanks for the help mate pics soon

 

[waterdrop]

I'm sure the story has changed now as its a couple days later but reading it it sounded to me like you should have been fine. How did it go? Are they still doing ok?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

As WD said, you are fine Wills. Planting your new plants has probably disturbed the materials in the gravel and anything, including minor bits of dead plant matter, will be rotting in the water column and increasing the biological load temporarily. In a few days everything should settle down nicely. Meanwhile, this kind of fragile bacterial balance is why we usually advise a trial week before introducing fish.

 

[Wills]

Hi sorry didnt realise I had replies to this - Things were looking good till this morning where I had a .25 nitrite reading so water change done immediately and now all ok. I think the reason for this is they have been uprooting plants regularly when looking for food in the gravel so taken them all out and hoping to swap my large wood (lols) for some more with java fern on but yeah I think it was the plants as a lot died and floated around I just couldnt keep up with it so they are out now (and for sale in the classifieds by the way )

Hoping things will go ok now but Ill keep an eye on it

 

[waterdrop]

Glad things are under control now, sounds like it wasn't too bad.

This is an excellent example of two of our beginner tank things we talk about. One is that plants during a fishless cycle, while basically pretty safe and easy as a thing to do, carry a small risk that if the beginner has trouble with them staying alive then they can add some ammonia just like adding fish would, but luckily usually in smaller amounts and with less anxiety about removal once its realized. Secondly, its a good example of the utility of the "qualifying week" performing its duty of occasionally catching a borderline biofilter that's still crossing the line a little between what we might judge as cycled or uncycled, even though in the end that's just a judgement call too.

~~waterdrop~~