Nutrafin Aqua Plus Ruining Cycle?

[Antilogical]

Hi all,
I've been reading and absorbing as much information as I can to make sure that I do everything correctly, but now I'm 4 days into a fishless cycle of my of 240L Juwel Rio Tank, and I'm concerned that adding Nutrafin Aqua Plus has rendered my cycle useless. Just after filling my tank on the 9th, I added 31.6mL of Aqua Plus to dechlorinate the 240L of water in the tank - this is equal to doing 5mL for 38L, which the instructions say is enough to remove Chlorine from the water. To remove Chloramine, it says "add 10mL to treat 38L of water"... I had no use for this as NZ water doesn't contain Chloramine...

I then turned on the heaters, and warmed the water to 29°C to start the cycle, this took about 30 hours. At 7:30pm on the 10th, I added 3.3mL of Ammonia solution to raise the concentration in the tank to 4ppm, as instructed by the fishless cycling guide (The ammonia solution concentration was 280,000ppm.. 28% strong... DO NOT sniff! ).

I also dosed the tank with Nutrafin Cycle - yes, whether it works is dubious, but it can't hurt can it?

Since then, the API master test kit has been showing a solid green, 4ppm reading for Ammonia since I dosed the tank. I realize it can take longer than this to show a drop, but I'm now wondering whether my adding of Aqua Plus a day beforehand converted the Ammonia into a less useful form, that apparently can still show up on the API kit. I can't find any information to confirm if this is true or false, so I'm left asking myself is my Ammonia in the tank now useless?

My understanding is that Ammonia in water exists in equilibrium anyway, through the reaction:

NH3 + H2O <--> NH4+ + OH-

So won't there be some NH4+ in the tank anyway? Sorry if this is a stupid question...

Thanks,
Luke.

 

[phocoena]

No. The bacteria can use either Ammonium (NH[sub]4[/sub][sup]+[/sup]) or plain ammonia (NH[sub]3[/sub]).

It is good to know the pH of your water as well. Lower pH's can slow down or stall the cycle. Test water out your tap for this as the tank water pH will be increased as Ammonia/Ammonium raises pH.

 

[phantomlink]

It will be fine, when I started cycling the filters for my 125 gallon it took 5-6 days for the ammonia to go from 5ppm to 0 overnight. Now its going from 4-5 to 0 in 12 hours or less and I'm just waiting for the Nitrates to vanish

 

[Antilogical]

Just did a API pH test on the aquarium water using both standard and high range... standard is showing "7.6 or greater" and high range is showing a solid 7.8 - these values, from what I have read, should be just fine for the bacteria to grow.

My main concern is if the Aqua Plus I added to the tank has chemically altered the Ammonia and locked it into an unusable form...

 

[Essjay]

Some dechlorinators which 'detoxify' ammonia turn it into ammonium, others bind it to another chemical. Whichever yours does, the ammonium or bound ammonia will still be available to the filter bacteria and won't hinder a fishless cycle. The effect only lasts about 24 hours, so even if it did remove the ammonia in a way the bacteria couldn't access, a day later it would all be back as ammonia.

If your tapwater pH is also high, both freshly drawn tapwater and water that's stood overnight, you should be OK. The pH in a cycling tank can go all over the place. The ammonia raises the pH then when the ammonia drops and nitite and nitrate increase, they drop the pH. If the pH falls below 6.5, which is more likely with a tapwater below 7, the bacteria stop multiplying and the cycle stalls.

The reason I mention testing water that's stood overnight is that the pH usually changes. Mine goes up .2. It is useful knowing both pHs for when you have fish

 

[Antilogical]

Thanks for the clarification and heads up on the pH.

The cycling seems to be slowly starting now anyway... Yesterday Ammonia looked slightly less than 4ppm, and Nitrite looked less than 0.25ppm. Today, the Ammonia looks to be somewhere in the range of 3-3.5ppm, and the Nitrite is a solid 0.5ppm, so hopefully everything is working.

Lights on, temp is at 29°C, and I'm providing as much surface agitation as possible...

 

[cambojnr]

It will be fine, when I started cycling the filters for my 125 gallon it took 5-6 days for the ammonia to go from 5ppm to 0 overnight. Now its going from 4-5 to 0 in 12 hours or less and I'm just waiting for the Nitrates to vanish

do you not mean nitrites? as nitrates will never disappear

 

[phantomlink]

It will be fine, when I started cycling the filters for my 125 gallon it took 5-6 days for the ammonia to go from 5ppm to 0 overnight. Now its going from 4-5 to 0 in 12 hours or less and I'm just waiting for the Nitrates to vanish

do you not mean nitrites? as nitrates will never disappear

Ya I'm still constantly mixing the two up. Those scientists should have named them not so closely