Stalled Fishless Cycling - Chloramine?

[jmcgui3]

Hello all,

I'm new to the fish hobby and recently tried to do fishless cycling per the instructions on this forum. I have a basic 10 gallon tank with no plants and a simple lid mounted aerator. The ammonia I added was the janitorial strength found at Ace's Hardware (no surfactants). I started the cycling about 10 days ago and the ammonia has held at about 4 ppm, nitrites at .25 and no nitrates. The pH is at about 7.8 and water temperature has been consistently held at around 82 degrees F. I couldn't figure out why the ammonia wasn't being converted into nitrites but I recall something that may have affected the cycle and wanted some opinions. When I first set the tank up, I added the gravel, water, and water conditioning to remove chlorine/chloramine. However, a few days later I added a few lbs of gravel that I rinsed outside using tap water. I don't believe I added any water conditioning when adding the gravel to the tank. Do you think any residual chloramine on the gravel could have stalled my cycle? Also if that is the case, can I simply just add more water conditioner to the tank now to fix this?

Thanks.

 

[hollanda88]

If you added a fair amount of tap water wile adding the gravel you may have killed off the 'good bacteria' which had already collanised the filter medium. If this is the case you may want to purchase another starter bacteria, add that and then keep an eye on you water readings for a while.

 

[Rubyuk]

I'm not qualified to offer an answer to your query as i'm a newbie myself.

What I can pass on though is that i'm currently on day 27 of my fishless cycling and nothing happened drastically with my readings until about day 24 when my nitrite showed about 0.3.Up until then my ammonia was never reducing to anything like zero,it just plateaued out at about 2.4ppm

Following seeing people talking about getting a 'leg up' with getting a source of beneficial bacterie to kick start the process I then went to the two shops where I will be buying my fish and asked if they could donate or if I could buy any filter media etc from one of their mature tanks.

I was donated a small fish bag of gravel and some of the white filter foam and then bought two plants on bogwood that were on sale in one of their tanks.

I added those to tank on day 25 and the next day my ammonia had dropped to 0.6 and my nitrites risen to 1.6

One day later on day 27 (today) and my ammonia is reducing to Zero within 24 hours and I have nitrite and nitrate spikes.

So don't worry my friend.

I've been where you are,starting off all excited and then getting despondent when nothing seems to be happening day after day after day.

You still need patience but following on from my own slow experience if I could pass on one piece of advice newbie to newbie it would be to get some media from a mature tank from your local LFS.

It definately speeds things up.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with Ruby, 10 days is nothing, but he said it better!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rubyuk]

Yes, agree with Ruby, 10 days is nothing, but he said it better!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[petertr]

Hello all,

I'm new to the fish hobby and recently tried to do fishless cycling per the instructions on this forum. I have a basic 10 gallon tank with no plants and a simple lid mounted aerator. The ammonia I added was the janitorial strength found at Ace's Hardware (no surfactants). I started the cycling about 10 days ago and the ammonia has held at about 4 ppm, nitrites at .25 and no nitrates. The pH is at about 7.8 and water temperature has been consistently held at around 82 degrees F. I couldn't figure out why the ammonia wasn't being converted into nitrites but I recall something that may have affected the cycle and wanted some opinions. When I first set the tank up, I added the gravel, water, and water conditioning to remove chlorine/chloramine. However, a few days later I added a few lbs of gravel that I rinsed outside using tap water. I don't believe I added any water conditioning when adding the gravel to the tank. Do you think any residual chloramine on the gravel could have stalled my cycle? Also if that is the case, can I simply just add more water conditioner to the tank now to fix this?

Thanks.

In answer to your question, no. Adding that gravel will have done no harm.

However, adding an extra dose of dechlor will do no harm at all if you want to totally remove the possibiity.