Need A Bit Of Reassurance On Cycling

[Seed]

I'm cycling a 45 Gallon tank with 2 small feeder goldfish at the moment, but I've come across something that is confusing to me. This is not the first tank I've cycled, but I haven't seen the cycle happen like this before. I am in my third week of cycling, and here is what has happened so far:

1. Ammonia has spiked at .5 PPM before dropping down nearly to zero and now fluctuates between .25 PPM and 1.0 PPM.
2. Nitrite levels climbed to .25 PPM and eventually peaked at .5 PPM.
(this seems normal to me, actually it seems pretty good, I would have expected the nitrite levels to go quite a bit higher than that)
3. Within two days, the nitrite had reduced itself to an undetectable level.
4. I am still getting ammonia readings, even though I no longer register any nitrites at all.


Readings are currently as follows:

pH = 6.8

.5PPM < [NH3] < 1.0PPM

NO2- = 0 PPM

NO3- = 5 PPM

I have been doing daily 10% water changes, taking care to neutralize the tap water with each change before adding it into the tank. Due to the nitrates, I have introduced some elodea into the tank as well to utilize this byproduct. Because I don't want the feeders to suffer unnecessarily before they are fed to my cichlids in my other tank, I have used Amquel+ to control the excess ammonia. I also forgot to mention that I did use a media pad from my other filter to "seed" this tank. The fish are active and do not appear to be under stress, although since they cannot speak, this is difficult to judge definitively.

From the research I have done so far, it appears that the Amquel does not lock ammonia away from the bacteria, so I am fairly certain that it has not disrupted the bio filter.

What I am curious about is whether or not the Amquel can fool the ammonia test into thinking that ammonia exists in the tank solution when in fact it has been bonded to the sulfato-complex in the Amquel solution, or if I am just seeing a normal cycle. My other tank cycled with a spike in ammonia, followed by a very high spike in nitrites, if I recall. This tank saw a very low spike in nitrites with the ammonia persisting after the nitrites dropped to zero.

Is this normal, or am I getting a false reading from the Amquel, causing me to add more Amquel, giving me a false reading... etc?

 

[mark.w.jones]

Products like Amquel and Ammo Lock which neutralize ammonia but still leave it available for use in th nitrogen cycle often makes your test kit give false readings. This thread should fill you in further:

http/www.fishforums.net/content/forum/90598/ammonia/

 

[Seed]

Products like Amquel and Ammo Lock which neutralize ammonia but still leave it available for use in th nitrogen cycle often makes your test kit give false readings. This thread should fill you in further:

[URL="http/www.fishforums.net/content/forum/90598/ammonia/"]http/www.fishforums.net/content/forum/90598/ammonia/[/URL]

I found this in one of the links on that thread:

Warning: Amquel and other similar ``ammonia-neutralizing'' water additives are incompatible with most ammonia test kits. Water treated with Amquel will falsely test positive for ammonia, even when ammonia is not present. Test kits using the ``Nessler'' method are known to give false readings under such conditions.

This seems somewhat ambiguous. My test kit uses salicylate reagent, not Nessler. On the bottle it just says "For ammonia tests use kits with salicylate reagents," but it does not actually say whether Amquel+ will give false readings with that reagent as well. I'm not sure if it doesn't affect the reagent at all, or if it gives "less false" readings than the Nessler based test kits do.

Kind of confusing, because it seems as though I should have been done cycling after the NO2- spike, but I dunno, because I'm still getting the ammonia readings, which are relatively constant.

 

[Mikaila31]

I know amquel will effect the API liquid test kit as I have added it to my tank before. I got a reading on 1ppm and it never really deviated from that. I suggest you switch to prime.

 

[Seed]

I know amquel will effect the API liquid test kit as I have added it to my tank before. I got a reading on 1ppm and it never really deviated from that. I suggest you switch to prime.

Cool, thanks for that, I'll give it a shot. Any idea how long it will take for the amquel stuff to break down and no longer throw off the readings? Or should I just do a large water change?

 

[Mikaila31]

It took me a long time to get rid of the amquel, I suggest doing a couple large water changes about 40%. You could also try adding carbon, but I don't know if that will do anything. The water changes may not have any effect at first, but eventually they will work. I remember the 1st 50% water change I did to my 15gal tank left me with the same reading as before. I'm thinking your tank is fully cycled if you already had the nitrite spike, so once you get rid of the amquel you should have zero ammonia. I would do one large water change every day until the readings drop to zero. Also I suggest you toss the amquel so you don't accidentally add it to a tank.

 

[Seed]

Little update to this:

I did an experiment that I should have done before I created this thread, but I'm posting this information because I thought some people might find it useful or interesting. I took about a quart of aquarium water out of the fish tank, and from that I set aside about a cup. I then treated the remainder of this with about 1 ml of Amquel+. Next I took a quart sample of tap water, reserved two cups and treated one with 1 ml Amquel+ and the other with 1 ml Amquel+ and 1 ml of my normal tap neutralizer.

Finally I took a sample of each and tested for ammonia with the ammonia test that I have been using. The results:

Untreated tank water: .50 PPM
Treated tank water : 0.0 PPM

Untreated tap water : 0.0 PPM
Treated Tap water (Amquel+ only) : 0.0 PPM
Treated Tap water (Amquel+ & tap cond): 0.0 PPM


I am going to let the treated tank water sit overnight and then test another sample of it to see if there is a slow reaction taking place that throws off the test readings after a period of time has passed.

Preliminarily I would have to say that Amquel+ does not appear to have any effect on my ammonia test, based on these results.


EDIT
Grammar and sentence structure.

 

[Mikaila31]

What kit are you using?

 

[Seed]

What kit are you using?

I'm using the API test kit, sorry, I should have mentioned that.



At this point it looks like the nitrogen cycle hasn't run its course yet. The original nitrite spike was probably an anomaly, or due to the fact that I had used some used media and water when I set up this aquarium. I'll know for sure when I test the sample again tomorrow.

 

[Seed]

After about 16 hours there are still no signs of ammonia in the treated tank water. I kept the temperature constant with the aquarium temperature by floating the treated water in the aquarium, so there should have been little to no difference in any potential rate of reaction. With my municipal water chemistry and with my water conditioner, I can say pretty conclusively that Amquel+ does not contribute to any false ammonia readings with the API test kit. If it does contribute to false ammonia readings with this particular kit, it does so through a very, very slow reaction mechanism... so slow that at ~77 degrees F and 16 hours of elapsed time, I'd think it was exceedingly unlikely that a slow rate reaction occurred without any detectable products. Since the experiment is easy to reproduce, if there is doubt about the results it can easily be run, even artificially with bottled ammonia and Amquel+.

This of course pertains only to my water chemistry.... but that said I'd think that it'd be a pretty remote possibility that another municipal supply would cause a significant difference from the results I found.

I apologize for creating this thread before I systematically looked into the problem. Still, I think it has been useful, and at least for the API test kit and this particular ammonia locking product, it should answer some questions. From what I read via links and whatnot, there are some misconceptions on this issue.