Nitrite And Ammonia In Tank

[Spamtastic]

I have a new 20 gal tank which I have been doing a fishless cycle on for 5 and a half weeks. When 5ppm ammonia went to 0 in 12 hours alongside 0ppm Nitrite, I thought the cycling was complete so I added my fish, a Betta and 6 Otos.

I have been testing water daily just to be on the safe side and today, I found 0.5ppm Ammonia and 0.5ppm Nitrite.

I am now doing 10% water changes hourly, have added some safe start which came free with the tank when I bought it and testing regularly. So far, it's been 4 hours and there is now 0.25ppm Ammonia and 0.25ppm Nitrite.

Fish are all acting fine, no fins clamped, active, etc but I know how fussy Otos are and I don't wanna kill them!!!

I would like to know if Im doing the right thing? And also if there's anything else I should be doing? Thank you

 

[arobinson1984]

Yes you are doing the right thing but when you see any ammonia or nitrite present you need to be doing larger water changes than 10%. even though you are doing them hourly, the levels can easily rise in the hour between tests so small water changes won't be very effective.

From now on do a 50% change when necessary, as long as you dechlorinate and temp match new water by hand then larger water changes are normally more effective.

Did you continue dozing ammonia right up to the day before you added fish? I'm just wondering why your seeing ammonia now unless you have gad a small blip at the end of the cycle.

Did you continue with a qualifying week at the end of the cycle?

Andy

 

[craig855s]

do larger water changes,dont worry about exactly matching the temp, just so long as the temp doesnt drop LOTS then u'll be fine. In a 20 Gal a 50% water change is gonna be 3 bucketfuls of water or so,use 1 kettle full of water in each bucket and that'll be fine

 

[Spamtastic]

Thats brilliant - thanks guys.
I did continue to add ammonia, the last day being the day before adding fish.
Im assuming a qualifying week is where you continue to add ammonia even though you've reached 5 to 0 in 12 hours. I only did 5 days which may be the source of the problem.
I did add mature media from another tank which I have had set up for a few months now which I was hoping would have avoided this situation.
Im really sad and have a thermometer I use to match temp exactly and am in the habit of doing this. Have just done a 50% change and tests are now showing 0.25ppm Nitrite and Ammonia again so will do another in an hour before bed.

 

[glolite]

You're doing fine. Just keep up the waterchanges, preferably 50% per day. It won't take long until the tank is cycled.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with the others - you're doing the right thing, 50% changes should allow you more time before you need to change water again.

If you were reaching double-zeros within 12 hours and then did 5 days of "qualifying week" watching it do that then you were being quite conservative and I'm surprised its mini-cycled on you -- very unusual. Not only that but a betta and some otos does not sound like a very heavy load to me, makes it even harder to understand. If you did not have enough biomedia volume I would think you would have had trouble with during the qualifying week and maybe that would have been it but as it stands its unusual.

There should certainly be some percentage of water change you could arrive at which will allow you to go 12 hours and only have to do a morning and evening change at most hopefully.

~~waterdrop~~