Seeded Fishless Cycle

[nitrochicken]

Hi,

I've bought a new fish tank(54L kit from Aldi) and have been fishless cycling it for about 4 weeks. I hung gravel from my current tank(UGF) in a mesh bag in front of the internal filter in an attempt speed up the cycling.
It seems to be processing ammonia from 5ppm to about 1ppm in a couple of days but never seems to get to 0ppm.
There seems to be no problem processing nitrite as this returns to 0ppm in the same amount of time.

I have been adding more ammonia even though it does not reach 0ppm as I'm worried that I'll be starving the nitrite processing bacteria if I leave it too long.

Any ideas what could be going on? Last time I did this, everything went by the book with the nitrite processing bacteria taking much longer to develop.

Thanks

Dale

 

[waterdrop]

Have you been measuring pH as well as ammonia and nitrite in your morning and evening tests?

 

[nitrochicken]

I have been doing a pH test every few days and it has stayed around the same as my tap water at 8.2 ish.

Dale

 

[waterdrop]

Any chance your internal filter has any zeolite or ammo chips in it? (sort of like carbon/charcoal but white) If these were present, they could be removing all the ammonia chemically, thus depriving the bacteria of food.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nitrochicken]

I don't think so. The filter is a re-badged eheim 2008 internal and just has a standard white sponge in.

Dale

 

[waterdrop]

Wouldn't an eheim 2028 (never heard of a 2008 model) be bigger than the 54 liter tank itself, lol?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nitrochicken]

Definatley a 2008. Look here
Has a vita tech badge on though.

Dale

 

[waterdrop]

OK Dale, that looks like a great filter. You're pH looks optimal and everything you're doing sounds good.

I think you just lucked into a quicker start (or maybe entire thing) the first time. There are some cycles that want to be slow until some later time when they suddenly go quickly. If you get really frustrated with it after another week, say, you could try a 90% water change and recharge with ammonia. I assume your temp is about 29C/84F? Just doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong or have any signs of a problem that I can see.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nitrochicken]

I've been keeping the temperature at 25C as I have plants in the tank and wasn't sure if they'd survive higher temps.
I will persevere, ammonia has to drop to zero at sometime! Hopefully I'm not too far away now!

Thanks for the reassurance

Dale

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what test kit are you using and how long have you had it for? are you sure the reading's not dodgy and it is infact dropping to 0. try taking a sample of water to the lfs for testing, compare the results to yours and it'll become apparent if there's a problem with the test kit

 

[waterdrop]

agree, you need to be using a good test kit for this and that temp needs to be up at 29C, not 25C, the plants will like it just fine

~~waterdrop~~

 

[nitrochicken]

Test kit is only a few weeks old and is the API kit.
I've just tested some standard tap water for ammonia and I get a 0ppm result so it seems like its working ok.
Tank water is still 1ppm ammonia 0ppm nitrite like it was yesterday.
Is there some reason my bacteria don't like eating the dregs?!

I can try putting temperature up to 29C but I'm not sure that will help solve my problem as it will have to work at 25C once fish are in anyway.

Dale

 

[Miss Wiggle]

good to rule that out then if nothing else!

shouldn't be, another thing to ruel out is that your filter capacity is adequate. could be that bacteria growth has stopped because they have no more places to grow therefore you only have capacity to deal with 4ppm not 5ppm. Shouldn't be from the looks of it but not familiar with the make/model to say with any certainty. what filter media are you using?

 

[nitrochicken]

The filter came in a kit with the tank and is apparently suitable for aquariums up to 60L, mines 54 so should be fine. Media is a coarse(ish) white sponge which came with it.
I'm not sure now whether to leave it longer or add more ammonia. How long would the nitrite processing bacteria live without food?

Thanks

Dale

 

[VespertineStar]

Hi

I've got the same tank and filter (from the same shop) and I can vouch for the fact that it processes the ammonia OK.