cycling question

D

Dave11

AC Members
Mar 21, 2005
19
0
0
first off, hello everyone.
i was following a different aquarium forum, but cant seem to find good answers there so i thought i'd try here.
i have 2 tanks, a 10 and a 29.
in the 10, i did the typical newbie mistake of adding fish too soon and had wicked ammonia problems for a couple of weeks (8+ for awhile). i am still reading an ammonia level of 1ppm with 0 nitrates and 0 nitrites. my pH has been 7.0-7.2
now i just read in another thread here that the ammonia has to be at 2ppm for the cycle to start. true?
are the pH levels ok?
we have 2 adult mollies (a male sailfin and a female thats black and gold. sorry, not sure of the name) also have a small bottom feeder and 10 small mollie fry. (the reason we got the 2nd tank)
the water is crystal clear with only a small brown algae problem. we did use ammo-lock early on but i have been doing 25-50% water changes daily for almost 5 weeks now. started using stability by sachem to get the bacteria started but so far no sign of any.

any help/suggestions greatly appreciated.

Dave
 
Hi, I'm a newbie too, so I don't profess to know much, but like you I put my tank and fish together from the start and have been trying to get through the cycle. Everything I read on this site says never use ammo-lock it just subverts the nitrogen cycling process. Also you might want to say how long your tank has been set up and what and how often you're feeding them cause the decaying leftovers create an ammonia problem. PH is good between 6.5-7.5 for most fish. Seems you had high enough ammonia levels to get the cycle started but probably you should have just done more frequent water changes and not used the ammolock, last week I was changing water 2 - 3 times a day.
 
Last edited:
the 10 gal tank has been running for almost 2 months now. havent used ammo-lock since week 2.
i feed the fish twice a day very small amounts. what they can eat in about a minute. been doing water changes daily. most of the time its 25% but every 3rd or 4th day i do a 50% change.
 
Have you verified that you are using an appropriate water treatment for chlorine/chloramine treatment? Any signs of ill effects on the fish? Have you cleaned the media?
 
i have a penguin biowheel filter that is good for up to a 30 gal tank.
havent cleaned the filter since i bought it about 4-5 weeks ago.
havent had a fish death in about 5 weeks either. last dead one was just before i got the new filter. (old one was a whisper model)

is there that much difference in tap water conditioners? using the product manufactured by aquaria pharmacuticals.
 
When you swapped the filter, how far into the process was the tank? Did you transfer media from the old filter to the new one? If not, that's likely why the process is taking so long. Most of the bacteria develops in the filter media, so removing it and putting in a new one essentailly takes the tank back to day 1.

Yes, there is a huge difference in products. Some process chlorine fine, but do not break down chloramines, which are much more stable, and some will break down the chloramine but not bind the resulting ammonia--leading to high ammonia levels. Also, with the products that do bind the ammonia, specifis test kits will then give false positive results--they report both ammonia (toxic) and ammonium (non-toxic, bound form).
 
i swapped the filter out a week after setting the tank up. i have been consistantly getting readings of 0 ppm nitrates and 0 ppm nitrites. havent spiked either one yet.

the label of the conditioner claims to nuetralize both chlorine and chloramines.
 
just plastic ones.
will they help stabilize the tank? (for any wise***** out there, the real ones...not the plastic ones... ;) )

maybe i'll go buy another tesing kit and see if i get the same results. (been using reagent drops as per the directions)

i've already tested the tap water and got 0's across the board with a ph of 7.0 so i know thats not it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom