cycling question

D

Ditka

AC Members
Jan 11, 2010
27
0
0
Michigan
I have had water running through my filters for 20 days.
To start I set up a 10g rubbermade bin and dosed to 5ppm ammonia. had that going for a little over a week while getting tank set to go. Friday the 5th i filled tank with water and aragonite substrate(tank will be for brackish puffers which need high ph) and dosed with Dr. Tims One and Only. I dosed Ammonia to 2ppm every day after that and have had varying nitrite and nitrate readings.
i have a 29g tank

Here are my current readings(have not dosed with ammonia yet today):
Ammonia: .50 to 1.0 ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
Nitrite: 2 to 5ppm
no Ph reading today, but it has been consistently between 7.8 and 8.2

I guess i can't figure out why i am not cycled yet given the addition of dr. tim's.

i am curious if i may have low kh but no local pet stores have kh tests. should i dose with baking soda even without testing, would it do any harm?

The ammonia i am using is ACE Hardware's Janitorial Ammonia and contains 10% Ammonia Hydroxide.

any advice is appreciated. i have had a lfs order fish and plan to pick them up tomorrow! AHH!!!!!!!
 
Did you test the water prior to adding in Dr. Tim's stuff? Those readings to me look like a completely normal cycle to me. The Nitrosomas species are pretty well established and the Nitrobacter sp. (Nitrospira sp. if anything in Dr. Tims bottle was alive) are just getting established.

Question: What is the Nitrate reading of the water source? When the nitrate reading is above the baseline of the tap source you know that the Nitrobacter/Nitrospira are established and doing well.

Since you do have Nitrosomas sp. in the tank I would not mess with the kH. Blindly adding in additives without knowing the starting point is a good way to have a disaster.

From the readings on your tank you are a week or two away from having a cycled tank. See if the LFS can hold the fish for a few days for you until you tank is ready for them. If not you will have to do many, many water changes for the next month until the tank is fully cycled with the fish in it.
 
ok, update

I have been continuing to add ammonia to 1 or 2 ppm and now i am stumped... My ammonia is 0 this morning, my nitrates are 0, and my nitrites are at 2ppm. the nitrites have been high for a while and they do not seem to be changing...
any suggestions?

oh, ph is fine, around 8
 
You are currently waiting for the Nitrobacter/Nitrospira species to increase enough to start to break down the nitrite into nitrate. This can take some time to happen (several weeks).

Keep dosing the ammonia and wait for the nitrites to disappear and your readings to be 0-NH3, 0-NO2, & some (10-80)-NO3. This is when the cycle will be done.

You are over halfway there just a little more time.

BTW you've conclusively proven that the bottle of Dr. Tim's stuff was just stinky water when you added it to the tank.
 
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