Smoothys Cycling Diary

[Smoothy]

I'll bear the Bicarb in mind if it drops again

LOL ... how many tanks do you have Pammy?

I hope the dark stuff is the bacteria paul my sponges are filthy

 

[pammy172]

I'll bear the Bicarb in mind if it drops again

LOL ... how many tanks do you have Pammy?

I hope the dark stuff is the bacteria paul my sponges are filthy

I had an Orb(not BiOrb) that ran beautifully. Never a trace of anything, water always crystal clear but after finding this and other places realised it wasn't the best environment for the fishies - not enough swimming space. So we got a 260l as we wanted to get something bigger too.

When we set the big tank up the Orb went into the kitchen and we got to like the fish in there so now have changed the Orb to a Resun 47 litre rectangular tank which was again running beatifully until the filter packed up!. So as the big tank was now OK I moved the 6 corydora and 5 neons to that tank and have put a new, bigger filter in the Resun using some of the previous media which doesn't seem to have taken for some reason. It might just be a glitch and suddenly kick in - but we're treating it as a new tank and a full fishless cycle again.

The Resun is intended to home some more corydora and a siamese fighter when it's ready. The 260l is a community tank with mainly tetras, cory and some rainbows. In time there will be some Rams and poss more corydora and tetras going in.

Oh and the manky stuff is good!!! As long as it's not blocking the filters and isn't just crud, ie bits of plant and food etc, then it's good and not to be got rid of. Clean is bad, dirty is good in filter terms lol.

 

[paulbr1]

I didn't check my cycling filters - I daren't.

Is that your tank in the pic - don't want to post mine as it is quite sparse, no plants in as I am researching how to feed them properly CO2 and all that mallarky.

Paul.

 

[Smoothy]

Sounds nice, any pics? ... that's what I want, Corydoras been watching them so many times in the LFS and keep thinking ... one day, just maybe one day I'll have some of those

@paul ... yes that is my tank as my avatar ... looks very different now though lol ... with all this waiting I've been through 3 different types of wood, changed the plants around loads too ... have to feel like I'm actually doing something with looking at a tank all the time with no fishies in it

Will have to get an updated pic

I've just got low light plants ... Java Fern, Java Moss, Amazon Swords and Vallis ... all are doing great with lights on for 9 hours a day, daily dosing JBL ferts, no CO2

 

[waterdrop]

(pammy wrote)

I've taken some mature media from a previous tank we were running but it looks like it hasn't liked the move as it's not clearing ammonia at all atm. I'm reluctant to take anything from the now cycled tank as I don't think it's mature enough and needs to support the current set up. if it had been fully operational for say 6 months then I would have done so quite happily as we were running with more filtration than we need to give us a back up etc, so in time it will easily take donating some media, just not yet.

I think you are correct here. Its my feeling that there is a steady increase in the "robustness" and stability of the bacterial colonies in the filter for an entire year or so after startup, with the curve being especially steep the first 6 months.

(paul wrote)

That's a thought I did give my new tank a start with MM - think I might do it again as the MM in my other tank needs a clean!
I hope I am right in thinking that all the dark gunge on the MM is the bacteria
Paul.

Taking advantage of a needed clean is a great method. If the already existing filter you are going to take mature media (MM) from is still quite new, you may feel you don't want to "subtract" any of its newly mature media, but it might have reached readiness for a clean. There are two things you could consider doing. If your "donating" filter has a sponge, you could open up both filter boxes during the clean and squeeze the sponge gunk directly into the media of the new filter box (maybe even into a middle layer of the new filter if it has layers.) Alternatively, if the "donating" filter has trays of ceramic rings or gravel etc. then you could just clean them in the newly cycling tank. Yes! you just clean all this dark mank right into your pristine new aquarium where you've been worrying about how -clear- the water is ! The new filter will soon suck in all the stuff and hopefully get a dose of A-Bacs and N-Bacs in the process, to help accelerate its fishless cycle!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Smoothy]

Updated

NitrIte STILL not clearing within 12 hours ... even tested at 14 hours ... still 5ppm

Any ideas anyone? it's been 0ppm on the 24 hour mark now for 5-6 days

 

[paulbr1]

Hi, did you just get the one PH drop, mine seems to be having one 7.6 - 6.8 in a day.

Pity about your Nitrites, hope it's just a glitch.

Paul.

 

[Smoothy]

Yes, just that one big pH drop from 8.2 to 6.2 ... since the 80% water change it's been fine ... thank god

I'm reading everywhere else on tinternet about this NitrIte dropping to 0ppm ... everywhere else is saying as soon as it drops to 0ppm within 24 hours you're cycled ... do your water change and add fish, no one's had any troubles

Is it essential to wait until it's dropping within 12-14 hours?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, true, you can find just about anything written out there.. there's thinkfish calculator that will tell you its fine to pack a tank like a sardine tin!

Its important to remember that what you're trying to avoid is being forced to revert to a fish-in cycling situation after adding your fish too soon. This is the main feedback that has continued to refine our advice. There are just too many who have clearly reported adding their fish and then finding nitrite or ammonia showing up, much to their dismay.. after all the fishless cycling days they've done they find themselves doing frequent water changes because its turned out the colonies were still not mature enough.

You look to be fairly typical of many of the cases we see. At about a month, you've passed the halfway point of a slower 2-month fishless cycle and it makes you want to scream, we get -lots- of people feeling that way, but I promise you, nearly every one of those I can remember was off-the-charts excited when their "baby blue and lemon yellow" kicked in at 12 hours and became rock solid doing it. If your filter is a 6-week case then you may be only a week or two away. I feel that any of the situations where the water allows a pH crash tend to be the slower ones overall, compared to some quick cases we see where the buffering was so strong it never allowed a pH crash.

Hang in there, you're doing great!
~~waterdrop~~

 

[Smoothy]

I don't think it's a fair comparison the Thinkfish thing ... I know nobody on this forum likes the site, but it's not just Thinkfish that I've found saying it... and they've had no problems with losing fish and their levels are at 0ppm

I understand the reason for waiting for the 12 hour 0ppm's but I can't understand why on the 12 and 14 hour mark it is still 5ppm? yet on 24 hour it's 0ppm ... I've still had no answer to that

Surely my fish that I'll be adding won't be dumping 5ml worth of Ammonia in all at one time? it'll be more of a gradual drip throughout the day?

I just find it really frustrating that I bought a fish tank and 33 days on I have no fish

Thanks for the encouragement though I'll keep going

 

[paulbr1]

I am only on day 23 and am becoming fidgety, from what I have read the old 12 hour 0ppm is best and I think that is what MW and WD advocate, I do agree with the 12 0ppm but I can also see why other people go with the fish when they get 24 hour 0ppm readings.

I personally think and will probably get shot down but if your are not "fully stocking" your tank you wouldn't need the 12hour drop as less fish fish = less ammo = less nitrite and you "may" have enough Nbacs to clear what Nitrite is produced - here is the but, how do you/me know if we have enough Nbacs in there to clear it.

And are you going to fully stock straight away.

I am going to keep going but I also know that I will get tired after a while..

Paul.

 

[Smoothy]

I think I'll be adding my fish over a period of around 2-3 weeks ... mainly due to cost

I've already spent a fortune what with the tank, test kits, decor, plants etc

This is quite possibly the most frustrating thing I've ever done

Good luck to you ... hope you can stick with it

 

[waterdrop]

I understand the reason for waiting for the 12 hour 0ppm's but I can't understand why on the 12 and 14 hour mark it is still 5ppm? yet on 24 hour it's 0ppm ... I've still had no answer to that

I've never understood this either. Why would it seem to plateau and then seemingly drop off at a fairly steep rate? I think the observation is correct, as people have described it over and over, but the explanations have never seemed very good to me. Best guesses seem to me to be that there is a built-in artificial "stepping" feeling because the nitrite test designer had to just make a decision on how accurately the printer would be able to produce the color-chart cards and that there needed to be only a few "steps" to make the use of the test simpler, plus the test is still pretty crude overall. Also, another theory has been that perhaps the N-Bac NO2 processing is indeed not entirely linear, since they are animals and not just a chemical reaction. It could be that as a colony they sort of get a little biofilm production and cell division process going, they all join in and the process accelerates for a bit but then produces some sort of limiting waste that slows it back down until that's cleared by some other process. We do know that high NO3 levels are a growth rate limiter for N-Bac division, so it could be that there is a "locality" factor to this, with localized high level pockets of NO3 (which would of course be "waste" to an N-Bac sub-colony) causing slowdowns. Because the 5ppm "dump" causes a big spike of NO2 to come down the line, the initial NO2 to NO3 spike may then cause an N-Bac slowdown, only to be cleared more quickly as the overall NO3 level finally means there's less and less NO3 to "pocket" near the microspace of an N-Bac sub-colony in a biomedia crevice.

I kind of get a kick out of reading the occasional scientific papers in the bacteriology areas and there's lots of interesting work going on to learn about biofilms, but the effort overall mostly points out how little we really know I believe.

Another observation that plays into this is that its always been poorly explained as to why nitrate(NO3) seems to "hang around" even after very large water changes. Many have observed this. Its unclear whether this is just that the ppm levels we're looking at are higher and the tests we have move through the numbers more slowly (a real possibility!) thus just making us -think- its slower, or whether the NO3 indeed carries some attraction to DOC (dissolved organic carbon in various forms) or some other substances and is actually "held" as it were, to the filter media and other surfaces despite a water change taking place. You could see how this could play into the other topic up above.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh smoothy hang in there!

i know you can find people out there that have stocked when nitrite clears in 24 hours and have had no problems. you can also find people who didn't knwo what stocking was, dumped a load of fish in their tank, never did a water change, tested the water etc and never had any problems.

it's really risk mitigation here, the longer you wait the safer it will be when you do add fish, if you could just keep adding ammonia every day for 6 months or so then you'd be well and truly covered, but obviously that's a wee bit unrealistic so people set their own goals for what they feel is an acceptable level of risk. The guideline we work to on this forum is the 12 hour mark, some other people have decided on the 24 hr mark and just about every other mark in between.

I personally feel that 14 or maybe even 16 hrs would actually be OK but 24 hrs is a bit too risky, but that's just my personal judgement call from my experience and from other people's experiences on the forum, however I find when it drops at the 14 hour mark it'll most likely be at 12 hrs the next day anyway so it's not really a big enough difference to feel it's worth the rush.

Ultimately it is your tank, they will be your pets, we can give our guidance in our opinions but you have to make your own judgement call, I know this can be near impossible for a beginner so you just get down to the point of who do you want to believe.

None of us will take offence if you decide to go with someone else's estimation that the 24 hr mark is enough, we'll all keep our fingers well and truly crossed that it works out right for you. But I'd advise you to hold on just that little bit longer!

 

[Smoothy]

Updated

Still 5ppm on the 12 hour mark

Thanks guys and gals for the replies

Obviously you know what you're talking about a lot more than I do

I'll hold out a little longer but it doesn't look promising for the 12 hour mark for me ... hopefully I'll get a drop before the 24 hour mark soon and see just a little bit of a difference with my testing ... it's been the same for ages now and understandably I think I'm getting a little bored/frustrated with it

Will keep you posted