planted tank un-cycling!

[OnyxFishies]

I have a 29 gal moderately planted tank with store bought fementation CO2. (the nutrafin "natural plant system" kit) I seem to have managed to destroy my biofilter.

My questions: Will this cycle take as long as the initial one? Plants will get N from the ammonia, won't they? Is there something I could have done differently to prevent/minimize this?

What happened:

After hurricane Ivan I had a slight nitrIte spike. I think due to overfeeding with an autofeeder. (I don't think I'll use that stupid thing again) about .25ppm nitrItes. about a week later the nitrItes were starting to drop back off again, so I figured my spike was going away. Then my cat knocked over my newly set up CO2 fermentation canister, pumping about half the solution into the tank.

The resulting gooey slime white stuff (some sort of fungus? bacteria?) that took over my tank also inhabited my filter pads and bio-wheel. (penguin 170 and top-fin 100gph HOB filter, made by tetra.) The goey white stuff is gone after massive water changes, (probably 400%-500% total in the last 5 days) and I've had to rinse the you-know-what out of the filter pads to keep them flowing.. and not very well either.. (they would clog and overflow VERY quickly.. took less than a couple of hours) Ended up tearing one, so the filter on my penguin is brand new. (same biowheel though) End result is no remaining biofilter.

Current water params:
pH: 6.5 or so with CO2, normally about 6.8 without.
tap water is around 6.8 pH also. (aged)
KH: 80ppm (that is about 5-6 deg?)
GH: somewhere between 25 and 75 ppm.
ammonia: .25-.5 (GRR!)
nitrItes: 0
nitrAtes: 0

The KH and GH numbers may not be the most accurate.. I've only found test strips for them locally, so who knows how well they work. I'm unsure as to how much CO2 this translates to in my tank, from what I can understand from the resources I've seen and the charts on the krib I have about 50-60ppm of CO2 WITHOUT injecting it, so I'm reading the chart wrong.

Fish load is moderate to heavy for my 29 gal: (I think!)
Two dwarf Gouramis, 4 small (3/4 of an inch to 1 inch) corys, two otos, 6 neons, and a weather loach.

I don't have K or phosporous kits yet, so no numbers there. The massive water changes are with my tap water. (well water so no chlorine)

I dose with Flourish and Flourish Excel also. (I try to dose according to the directions, 2.5ml of flourish weekly and 5ml of excel daily, but with all the water changes I don't think much is staying in there.

Any thoughts or questions? Did I screw up somewhere? Any help or suggestions you guys have are greatly welcomed.

[daveedka]

I'm no expert on this vein, but can add a few things.

The kh number or the PH number is almost surely bogus. My tap water is very soft, with a kh of 2-3 degrees, the ph is 7.6-7.8 if I raise KH 1 degree, It raises ph to 8.0. Ro water with a kh of 0 is usually just slightly acidic, not to mention that 50-60 ppm co2 should be fatal to your fish.

Next issue is the cycle. Plants can create what is called a silent cycle. Basically if the plants are growing well they consume all or almost all of the ammonia, thus you don't get a spike even if you don't have an estabilished bio-filter. this is one of the ways to cycle a tank, and is fairly dependable if you don't overstock or overfeed quickly. My understanding is that a bio-filter will still estabilish, but the plants will hog the majority of the ammonia, and thus the bio-filter will never grow to the extent of being able to handle the full tank load without the help of the plants.

So in short if your plants are doing well just keep your feeding very light and watch the numbers. the bio-filter will estabilish, but you will never see ammonia or nitrite reading become detectable. The plants will take care of the fish if you take care of the plants.
Dave

[OnyxFishies]

I thought the plants would consume the ammonia. The thing is, I had a healthy and cycled tank... and then added some plants, and things went fine. Then the slight nitrIte spike, then the yeast and sugar and probably some alcohol pumped into the tank..

I'm not sure that my plant level is quite high enough to completly consume the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate produced. (heck, if it were, I probably never would have noticed the nitrIte spike or the ammonia.)

The point I was trying to make about the 50-60 ppm of CO2 is that I'm reading something wrong in the charts on the krib.

'sok, I'm basically looking for confirmation that I am making the right assumptions on other stuff. (IE, that I didn't make some mistake and kill off my biofilter.)

[djlen]

Go here:
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/articles.htm
Among a bunch of very informative articles, at the top of the page you will see a down loadable CO2/Nutrient Calculator.
Then just type in your pH/kH numbers and it will tell you what you've got for CO2 content.
You will need a phosphate test kit. There is no reliable/user friendly kit for K so don't waste your money. The calculator above will tell you the recommended dosage of K, although you may not need to dose it.
IMO, you have a light/moderate fish load, all of which are on the small side, so you won't be getting much in the way of nitrates from them and can dose more KNO3 which will supply your N and K.
I, personally don't have much confidence in the strip type test kits. You can get better ones from Big Al's online at a decent price. N,P,pH,kH are important numbers to know so I would not skimp on the test kits for them.
I have had great results dosing traces on a daily basis as apposed to bi-weekly or weekly. I've found that I can actually dose less total mls./week with far better results, by dosing daily.

Len