View Full Version : Middle of cycling - how far am I away from completion?
Here's my diary:
25g tank with 3 Platies, 2 "balls" of Java moss (roughly 8 inches each) and lots of little Java ferns trying to attach to stones... Using Aqua Clear 200 with only sponges.
Day 0 - 4:
- Saw zero ammonia with 3 Platies in the tank. Did first 20% WC.
Day 5:
- Saw < 0.5 Ammonia for the first time!
Day 6:
- Still < 0.5 Ammonia, zero Nitrite. 10% WC.
Day 8 - 9:
- Ammonia reads 0.5. 10% WC per day. Still no nitrite.
Day 10 - 13:
- Ammonia reads 0.5 - 1.0, but still no nitrites! I learned that it is not good to gravel vac this early (sucking up all those valuable bacteria!), and I've been doing it since day 1... :D No gravel vac from this point on until the tank is cycled!!!
Day 14 - 15:
- Nitrites! (although only at < 0.25). Ammonia peaked at 0.5 - 1.0, never above this level. Still keeping up with 10% WC every day. Somewhat surprised that Ammonia peaked this quickly. I guess stopping to do gravel vac helped...
Day 16 - 17:
- Nitrite reached 0.75. Increased daily WC to 20%. Ammonia has peaked, now it is at < 0.5 - almost undetectable.
Day 18 - 19:
- Expected sharper rise in Nitrite level, so increased daily WC to 30%. Hmm, not seeing any increase in nitrite, still steady at 0.75. Ammonia is almost undetectable now...
I guess I was trying hard to make sure that both Ammonia and Nitrite level stays below 1.0 an it seems to be working so far. The question I have though, is am I overkilling with WC? Is 0.75 nitrite level high enough to let cycle continue? Should I decrease the level of WC? How many more days do I have left to go?
ChilDawg
08-24-2003, 8:17 PM
It's not easy to tell...you must go until Ammonia and Nitrite are at zero before the cycle is completed...but you'll probably have small spikes with each fish added...add them slowly!
Haha I'm seeing you all over the place... :D Thanks for the feedback!
From what I have seen so far from other people's experiences, nitrite did climb up faster for them than it did for me. I did increase daily WC from 20% to 30% so that might be countering the overall effect.
I feed them every evening, and I can tell they are in a good shape - they feed very actively, sometimes one snatch a dried bloodworm from the other one's mouth! Also when I use the syphon, all of them come close to it, and "kiss" it frequently. So far, I couldn't detect any sign that they are living under stressed environment (cycling tank)...
ChilDawg
08-24-2003, 8:32 PM
Well, that is a lot of water for three platies...you'd get faster cycling with a whole bunch of extra fish, but you'd wind up killing them, too, as there'd be too much ammonia!
ChilDawg
08-24-2003, 8:33 PM
I try to answer as much as I can, so I'm all over the forums! :D
anonapersona
08-24-2003, 9:52 PM
I think I recall reading that it will take 38 days or more, but I can't find that info so it could be wrong, but more than a month seems correct. Less if you seed bacteria from an existing tank or have plants, perhaps.
Haha, if it really is 38 days, I am only half way through... :(
Back to google.ca looking for a store that sells Bio-Spira... :D
ChilDawg
08-25-2003, 8:06 AM
www.fishstoretn.com
Here's some more data:
Day 19- 21:
- Ammonia is definitely less than 0.5, getting more difficult to detect. Nitrite is still at 0.75. Kept up with daily 20% WC.
Day 22:
- Nitrite is dropping! It reads around 0.6 now. 20% WC.
Day 23 (today):
- Ammonia is now zero. Nitrite is still dropping, now at 0.4. 20% WC. I did _slight_ gravel vac today, only poked a little here and there. I could see lots of minute particles getting sucked up... (haven't gravel vacc'ed for a while in order to let bacteria grow).
Hmmm.... How come I'm not getting the nitrite spike that everyone else is getting? My experience so far is that I haven't reached 1ppm for both ammonia and nitrite during the past 23 days since the addition of platies...
I see the back side of the glass is getting green - I'm assuming these are algae that otto will take care of eventually?
I guess the best action is to continue what I'm doing so far?
ChilDawg
08-28-2003, 7:57 PM
Ottos usually go for diatoms, but they will probably take out that algae...I'd scrape it off now, though...
ACAquaman
08-28-2003, 11:22 PM
Even though I have just a 12 gallon with 4 zebra danios and two chinese suckers. I'm on my 38 th day and I've finally just recorded my first traces of Nitrite (.25) I'm going to do a water change in the a.m. and wait and see how long it takes to get every thing back to ZERO. I've learned Patiants is a must in Fish keeping:D
JSchmidt
08-29-2003, 8:28 AM
Originally posted by yhbae
What is a "diatom"?
Diatoms are tiny organisms that, collectively, form brown spots on the glass and decorations in an aquarium. It's sometimes referred to as brown algae. It's harmless, and seems to affect younger tanks much more than older tanks. Ottos will clean it up; so will an algae scraper.
HTH,
Jim
Is it going to be a headache if I don't remove the green algae now? I'd like to leave them for the eventual addition of ottos if they are capable of removing them completely over time...
Originally posted by ACAquaman
Even though I have just a 12 gallon with 4 zebra danios and two chinese suckers. I'm on my 38 th day and I've finally just recorded my first traces of Nitrite (.25) I'm going to do a water change in the a.m. and wait and see how long it takes to get every thing back to ZERO. I've learned Patiants is a must in Fish keeping:D
38 days! In the worst case, I guess you are about half way through... :rolleyes:
I hope today's level is lower than yesterday's - I will find out in few hours... :D (I can almost smell it - adding the next batch this Sunday...)
Day 24:
- Nitrite is now at 0.25, so I'm assuming that cycling is almost complete. One problem - pH dropped from 7.6 to 7.2 in ONE day! (My natural pH is 7.0). As usual, I did 20% water change after the test... This time I added slight amount of baking soda (adding some KH), just to make sure that this is not going to become the beginning of pH crash...
Should I be concerned about this?
JSchmidt
09-03-2003, 7:40 AM
My guess is that you have relatively little buffering capacity. That is usually expressed as degrees (or ppm) of carbonate hardness -- KH -- and it speaks to your water's ability to resist the pH-lowering effects of acids.
One of the end products of oxidizing ammonia/nitrites is acid -- bioacidification is the term that refers to the creation of acids thru the nitrogen cycle. In water with little buffering -- KH less than 3 degrees or 80-100 ppm -- the acids produced as a result of oxidizing ammonia quicky burn up the buffer (KH) and once that happens, pH drops rapidly because there is no buffer against the acids your tank is producing. There is a reason this often is referred to as a "pH crash"; the pH freefall can happen pretty quickly once KH is at or near zero.
You might check KH in your tap water and tank water. I'd expect to see almost no KH in the tank water and low KH (<3 degrees or 100 ppm) in tap water.
Adding baking soda is a good short-term solution to buttress KH against bioacidification. If your tap water has very low KH, you'll need a more stable, long-term solution, like putting a couple of tablespoons of crushed coral in a nylon stocking and dropping that into a filter. It will slowly dissolve and keep carbonates in the tank from dropping too far.
HTH,
Jim
Yes, my KH is low at the tap (2). I have been adding baking soda, but only enough to go up to KH=3. Even then, my pH is getting high, at 7.6. I will need to find a way to inject more CO2 (hopefully by the time I'm done stocking fishes, there will be more CO2).
By the way, my tank has been cycled completely now, zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and 5ppm of nitrate. Thanks everyone for help! :D