Deffo!
New 29Gal Glass Aquarium.
- Thread starter Snype2live
- Start date
Deffo!
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
to which
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
i just checked with 5n1 test strips and it shows same thing
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
I just shook the hell out of my nitrate solutions..and are retesting it right now hoping that I got it mixed up enought
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
just raised my ammonia back up to 4ppm hopefully this go round i see some change
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
I have also heard of others using start-zyme by tetra and never seeing nitrites? any thought on this or my thoughts of stocking this tank ??
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
Am I doing the fish-less cycle right adding enough ammonia to get it to 4-5ppm and letting it drop to .5-1ppm before dosing again and bringing it back up to 4-5ppm then letting it drop again an just continuing this cycle.
Many forum members believe that the "Instant Cycle" products are a waste of time and money, and certainly I felt that it made no appreciable difference to my cycle, however there must be something to explain what you're seeing.
Yeah, basically. The textbook way is to dose to 5ppm, and wait for it to drop - you would then see nitrites rise. You then dose daily (at the same time every day) to 3ppm, until you see both ammonia and nitrite drop to zero in 24 hours. During this time you see nitrates go through the roof, You then increase the dose back to 5ppm, and dose daily until you see both ammonia and nitrite drop to zero in 12 hours.
Since you aren't seeing nitrite at all, or a significant rise in nitrate, I'm not sure where you fit in, to be honest! I'll be interested to see a new set of test results, particularly nitrate, now that you've redosed ammonia.
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
Could it be the carbon sucking up some of the ammonia( the activated carbon in my filter)? I will be testing everything at nine o'clock tonight. So new test results then.
I don't think so, no, carbon removes heavy metals rather than ammonia. There is something called zeolite which I believe removes ammonia as well as heavy metals. It would probably be a wise precaution to remove it from the filter anyway (it doesn't need to be there anyway).
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Correct, you don't want Zeolite (usually looks like white or gray chips - I think aquaclear sells some boxes of it with pictures if you want to look in the row of filter supplies at the LFS and get the idea) because it will absorb too much of the ammonia in the beginning of the fishless cycle and not let the A-Bacs get enough "food."
You guys are probably just overthinking this a little. This is way too early in the fishless cycling process to be seeing all these patterns you are talking about. A fishless cycle is like watching a glacier melt (well maybe that's a bad analogy these days lol) anyway the stages of a fishless cycle can be very slow and being slow about it all is your friend in the end.
The reason something is happening in the first week is indeed because you fed the fish flakes for a while preceeding and this has caused you to have a little start on both types of colonies probably. Because the A-Bac colony is very small still and slowly put's out a little nitrite(NO2) the small N-Bac colony is able to immediately process it on in to nitrate(NO3) such that you don't ever get a chance to see it with your nitrite testing. Additionally, sometimes when you put in a bottled bacteria it will cause the patterns of what we see to be off from the normal - many of these products, if they still have anything alive in the bottle, will have the wrong species of bacteria, one which will process more like the N-Bacs for a while before it dies off. It is usually harmless if you just stop adding it (meaning you usually don't need to drain and start over) but it does usually make it more difficult for our beginners to read the process.
In my experience it can also be difficult to "find" the final nitrate product in the very early stages of a new tank despite seeing that ammonia is dropping and that you have added more maybe once or twice. This may be due to the fact that a new system has lots and lots of places for the nitrate ions to become charge-attached and more or less not show up in the testing. They attach deep in the substrate and to the filter media and parts. Eventually all these little places are used up and the readings become more clear, but you probably just need more time to see this. Even when you get in a little kick-start like you did you still -want- your fishless cycle to stretch out about a month because in our experience a lot more surprise failures happen when people fishless cycle for significantly less than a month and think that it is all working and add fish too soon. It's usually better to just extend that final "qualifying week" period such that at least a month goes by (having said that I will say that sometimes a system will seem really robust at 3 weeks and be ok but usually those are the ones that had some mature media added.)
I would try to let your ammonia go down to true zero ppm (if the days don't stretch out too much) before re-dosing to 4-5ppm because the quicker and the more ammonia you dump in there, the bigger the blast of nitrate(NO3) you may end up with in the later stages, possibly requiring you to change water and disturb the process. The reason the pH drops during cycling is because of this final nitrate(NO3) ion product. In a water solution the ion will be in a nitric acid state about 7% of the time or so and as we all know, even tiny amounts of that acid is very powerful. And it gets even more complicated because the thing that is countering that acid is the amount of buffering the system can offer. Only after the buffering is overcome will the pH really start dropping quickly (for this reason you can actually see much better what's going on by using hardness tests in conjunction with the pH test - BUT, I don't recommend that to you as it is just overkill for the average fishless cycler. Water changing at the right moment easily takes care of the situation in the late stages of fishless cycling.)
In your initial post I believe I remember you mentioning salt and in my experience that is only very, very rarely needed in any freshwater situation and is usually a mistake. You can use the search term "salt" and look for posts by oldman47 for some excellent discussions of this.
(thanks due to lockman for pointing me to this thread)
~~waterdrop~~
You guys are probably just overthinking this a little. This is way too early in the fishless cycling process to be seeing all these patterns you are talking about. A fishless cycle is like watching a glacier melt (well maybe that's a bad analogy these days lol) anyway the stages of a fishless cycle can be very slow and being slow about it all is your friend in the end.
The reason something is happening in the first week is indeed because you fed the fish flakes for a while preceeding and this has caused you to have a little start on both types of colonies probably. Because the A-Bac colony is very small still and slowly put's out a little nitrite(NO2) the small N-Bac colony is able to immediately process it on in to nitrate(NO3) such that you don't ever get a chance to see it with your nitrite testing. Additionally, sometimes when you put in a bottled bacteria it will cause the patterns of what we see to be off from the normal - many of these products, if they still have anything alive in the bottle, will have the wrong species of bacteria, one which will process more like the N-Bacs for a while before it dies off. It is usually harmless if you just stop adding it (meaning you usually don't need to drain and start over) but it does usually make it more difficult for our beginners to read the process.
In my experience it can also be difficult to "find" the final nitrate product in the very early stages of a new tank despite seeing that ammonia is dropping and that you have added more maybe once or twice. This may be due to the fact that a new system has lots and lots of places for the nitrate ions to become charge-attached and more or less not show up in the testing. They attach deep in the substrate and to the filter media and parts. Eventually all these little places are used up and the readings become more clear, but you probably just need more time to see this. Even when you get in a little kick-start like you did you still -want- your fishless cycle to stretch out about a month because in our experience a lot more surprise failures happen when people fishless cycle for significantly less than a month and think that it is all working and add fish too soon. It's usually better to just extend that final "qualifying week" period such that at least a month goes by (having said that I will say that sometimes a system will seem really robust at 3 weeks and be ok but usually those are the ones that had some mature media added.)
I would try to let your ammonia go down to true zero ppm (if the days don't stretch out too much) before re-dosing to 4-5ppm because the quicker and the more ammonia you dump in there, the bigger the blast of nitrate(NO3) you may end up with in the later stages, possibly requiring you to change water and disturb the process. The reason the pH drops during cycling is because of this final nitrate(NO3) ion product. In a water solution the ion will be in a nitric acid state about 7% of the time or so and as we all know, even tiny amounts of that acid is very powerful. And it gets even more complicated because the thing that is countering that acid is the amount of buffering the system can offer. Only after the buffering is overcome will the pH really start dropping quickly (for this reason you can actually see much better what's going on by using hardness tests in conjunction with the pH test - BUT, I don't recommend that to you as it is just overkill for the average fishless cycler. Water changing at the right moment easily takes care of the situation in the late stages of fishless cycling.)
In your initial post I believe I remember you mentioning salt and in my experience that is only very, very rarely needed in any freshwater situation and is usually a mistake. You can use the search term "salt" and look for posts by oldman47 for some excellent discussions of this.
(thanks due to lockman for pointing me to this thread)
~~waterdrop~~
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
so are you suggesting I take out my carbon filter...all I have running in the filter is a simple biological sponge and a carbon filter your can look it up at wal-mart it is the Tetra Whisper 10-30i PowerFilter. I'm really new to this and just looking for some assurance that I'm not doing anything wrong. Especially with the fact of seeing my ammonia drop but no change in nitrites and no significant changes in nitrates.
Yes, the carbon loses its effectiveness after a couple of weeks, and needs replacing. BUT, it's only used for removing heavy metals. Most decent dechlorinators will also deal with heavy metals anyway, so the only reason you would need carbon is to remove heavy metals from sources other than tapwater - which is basically only medication.
I'd suggest you get the Bio-Bag cartridge refill to replace the carbon - it gives a much better area for your bacteria to colonise.
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
will do as soon as I can. Are the bio-bag made for the Tetra Whisper 10-30i PowerFilter.
OP
OP
Snype2live
Fish Fanatic
and my i also ask what the differance is ?? They look exactly the same besides a grey top instead of blue and one says (bio-bag) ultra activated carbon the other (the normal filters for it) contain regular activated carbon
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