Perhaps Filter Media Advice?

[Boulder Fish]

I am in week 6 of my fishless cycle, and no nitrites have appeared yet.
This is a 20 gallon tank, and I have had a couple of stalls in the cycle due to drops in pH.
I finally resorted to baking soda, and the pH has maintained at 7.6 for the last eight days.

The ammonia load is being processed with 36 hours (4.0 ppm to 0 ppm), though the nitrates seem to be holding steady at about 80 ppm.

It has not occurred to me to ask about my filter media before. I have an external/power filter. I have activated carbon and zeolite crystals in the cartridge. I have gravel substrate without substrate filtration. The temperature in the tank is about 84 degrees F.

I can continue to be patient if that is all I need to do, but I am curious if my filter media (or anything else) is hindering the nitrates from peaking, and the nitrites from hitting the scene.

Thank you all.

 

[ox5477]

Test your tap water. Does it dontain nitrates?

Because if it doesn't and you have nitrates in the tank, then your cycle is done... It may have happened in between readings but your nitrites may have completely cycled quickly, and so quickly in fact that you didnt even see it. I would do a large wc and keep cycling (re-adding ammonia) for say maybe another 72 hours and test for nitrates. If the nitrates go up over the time, then it is cycled and your good to go

Ox

 

[RedeyesUK]

It's probably the zeolite that's causing the problems - zeolite is used to remove ammonia from the water, so it's probably sucking everything out that you're putting in, before any bacteria have a chance to process it.

To be sure though, have you tried a different test kit? Just to rule out the possibility that you have a faulty nitrite kit. It seems strange to have that much nitrate in your tank, without any nitrites to be processed.

The other possibility is that your tank is already cycled, and the nitrite spike came and went without you noticing - although, with the zeolite in there, I'd say that was your main culprit.

 

[waterdrop]

No, its definately the zeolite - you never want that in there, especially during a fishless cycle. You don't need carbon either, but for different reasons. All your space in the HOB should be dedicated to mechanical and bio filtration. Carbon and zeolite are (allow room here for me to be a little wrong in the experts eyes, but hey!) both mainly chemical filtration media - they perform functions you don't need during fishless cycling.

Replace them with ceramic rings, ceramic pebbles or sponge I would say. I know it can be difficult figuring out how to do this, but figure it out you must!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah sorry to say but the zeolite is probably taking up the ammonia meaning the cycle hasn't even started

take it out then add your 5ppm of ammonia and see what happens

 

[Boulder Fish]

Ah Gee.
That stinks.
It seems that the after-effects of bad advice can be REALLY long lasting... Even though it makes me sad to have spent all this time doing what I thought was a fishless cycle, and now essentially, I will be starting over, I want to encourage all the newbies like me to keep trying.

I'd MUCH rather shed a few tears of frustration that I did it wrong, than have to cry over dead fish because I got impatient.
Thank you so much to all the experts who practice such patience and encouragement on this site. Its inspiring!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Ah Gee.
That stinks.
It seems that the after-effects of bad advice can be REALLY long lasting... Even though it makes me sad to have spent all this time doing what I thought was a fishless cycle, and now essentially, I will be starting over, I want to encourage all the newbies like me to keep trying.

I'd MUCH rather shed a few tears of frustration that I did it wrong, than have to cry over dead fish because I got impatient.
Thank you so much to all the experts who practice such patience and encouragement on this site. Its inspiring!

oh bless ya boulderfish, that's really sweet.

my heart goes out to you, i can totally see why you'd be frustrated and annoyed, but i'm glad you are looking at the long term and putting this set back into perspective.

stick with it, you'll get there

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I've always thought that the step of understanding the filter hardware and media needs to happen before fishless cycling. I'm afraid we are often guilty during our advice giving of working so hard to convince newcomers to switch from the LFS advice to doing fishless, that we either forget or feel it is adding a bit too much complication, so it gets short-changed.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

thats my 1 complain with the fishless cycling article, it goes straight in at the deep end and doesn't explain some of this stuff beforehand. now obviously you can't cover everything (or you'd be writing a book!) but sometimes we need to be cautios not to just throw the fishless cycling link at people without covering anything else first.

 

[waterdrop]

I feel so sympathetic to the challenge that RDD faced with that fishless article. I went off and read a ton of other fishless articles around the web and he did a really good job of making an article that was approachable by newcomers without overwhelming them too much hopefully and yet covered the necessary things in a good way. Its just a really tough problem that there is a lot of stuff to absorb in the beginning when you are new to the hobby.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Boulder Fish]

Well, to buoy my spirits, I took a trip to the LFS to pick up some new and appropriate filter media.

I was amazed at the look I got from Mr. LFS when I said I was committed to a fishless cycle. "You know the only way introduce ammonia to your tank is by adding a fish..." he said to me. But, I stood my newbie ground and explained my bottle of ammonia, dropper, and calculator. Is it possible this salty store steward had never heard of this technique? Or was he just trying to sell me a fish that will die so I would have to come back and buy another one that will die... $$$ ? Man, that is sad.

Moving on...

Now that I have straightened out this problem, and am starting from scratch, are their any other common stumbling blocks like the pH drop/stall problem, and this issue of inappropriate filter media?

I guess I am looking for "if only I knew then what I know now..."

 

[waterdrop]

Its funny to think that even though we have 35,000+ registered members here on TFF, we are still probably a drop in the bucket compared to all the LFS customers out there. The LFS model has been working ok for many years and most retailers in the industry probably just have various habits that stay the same for them. There are many threads where members have speculated about LFS thinking, but, to pick a more fringe speculation, I've sometimes thought that for them, considering they routinely handle thousands of fish, the thought of a dead fish or two can't help but be a different thing than for the hobbyist. Over time they probably get less able to put themselves in the shoes of the hobbyist, even if they wanted to.

So, moving on as you say..
Good question, what other surprises might be waiting. Well, I'm drawing mostly a blank at the moment but I'd say yes there are things out there because my feeling is that fishless cycling is still a bit of an experiment in progress, although the process we use seems pretty foolproof ultimately and I think the members think it keeps getting better, slowly.

There is still some speculation about optimal culturing temperature. RDD has tried some runs with temps up in the 90sF but the jury is out. I personally did 84F after hearing some questions about whether higher temps might cause some problems but I think its all speculation. There clearly is the problem of setback if your ammonia level gets up around 8ppm, so important to keep it down at the 4-5ppm. Speaking of the pH thing, in hindsight I'd be much more inclined now to not hesitate to add baking soda and get the pH up as close to 8.0 as I could, as I think the bacteria like that a lot better - I used to feel more hesitant about that. Another think is the buildup of nitrites and nitrates in the long later stages after ammonia is dropping pretty fast but nitrite doesn't want to go down for you. I'd now be inclined to do more water changes to help clear those excesses and, not incidently, to clean the gravel and tank more if the fishless cycle is taking a long time. Another technique that is used to keep the nitrites from building so high in the last stage is to lower the amount of ammonia added each day during that period, so adding 2-3ppm instead of 4-5ppm until you finally are getting close to having nitrites drop to zero in 12 hours, then you ease back up to 4-5ppm for the final week or so. Its important to have a final week of just riding along after you've qualified as fully cycled, because sometimes it fools you and a week or so will catch those mistakes.

There, if you got through that dense paragraph it means you're pretty up on some of the finer points I bet...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I feel so sympathetic to the challenge that RDD faced with that fishless article. I went off and read a ton of other fishless articles around the web and he did a really good job of making an article that was approachable by newcomers without overwhelming them too much hopefully and yet covered the necessary things in a good way. Its just a really tough problem that there is a lot of stuff to absorb in the beginning when you are new to the hobby.

~~waterdrop~~

totally agree, i meant no disrespect to rdd, it is a brilliant article, just sometimes there's so much ground to cover that you can't tell people everything at once, so sometimes we should mention fishless cycling but not as the only link.... should combine other stuff like the filter media pin.

 

[waterdrop]

yes, that's all I meant, the "large amount of information all at once" problem is one we face as a whole forum and it may never have a really good answer...

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I'm trying to build up a reasonably well rounded collection of links in my sig, might just start telling people to read them all then come back with any questions!