Cycle Set-back

[hurricanejedi]

I'm exactly 3 weeks into a fishless cycle. Sunday I think I messed things up. I did about a 30% water change. I also shut off my filter and drained it so I could add some really small shells since my kH is only about 2.5 (I'm planning on doing co2 injection). That hasn't seemed to work at all except raise my gH from 5 to 6, so I'm going to get some crushed coral this weekend (I'm afraid to repeat this process now though). Everyday I add 18mL of ammonia and it was gone by the next day. Now it goes from about 3ppm to 1ppm in a day. Today it got down to .25ppm so its getting better. However what caused this? Just because I did a water change and shut my filter off for a while (no more than 1.5 hours - it took a while because I didn't know what I was doing)? I think tomorrow it will be back down to 0 but gosh that would be 5 days to recover since my water change on Sunday :( . If I had fish that would have been bad.

Another concern I have is my tap is 8.2 but if I wait a day its 7.2. Is that a problem if I don't age my water before puting it in my tank (I just use a python hooked to the sink and dose Prime for the whole tank).

My nitrites are at 5 and my nitrates are about 8. Those haven't moved at all (5 is the highest my kit goes). My pH is 7.0. I'm starting to get impatient and disappointed :( . I was hoping I'd be done in 4 weeks but now I don't think it will ever finish.

[mishi8]

You're only 3 weeks in. Give it more time. My first fishless cycle took a lot longer than that (stalled part way through). Personally, I think 4 weeks is optimistic, cycling from scratch (fishy or fishless) can take 4-6 weeks or more.

[raymond_h2002]

You're adding CO2, so I assume you're going to plant heavily? If so, then why not just plant everything now and skip cycling? Your bacteria colony will be decimated once your put in your plants, which compete against them for ammonia and nitrates.

[hurricanejedi]

I know I was probably being optimistic to finish in 4 weeks but gosh I really want to be done with this. I was ahead of things for the first step. It only took about a 1.5 weeks for my ammonia to go to 0 in 24 hours because I had borrowed gravel from 2 different friends aquariums. I'm also afraid to every touch my filter again and don't understand why my ammonia consumption got cut back.

I do want to plant heavily. I'm planning on ordering from freshwateraquariumplants.com their 40-50G plant package. I imagine the plants would come really small and maybe too small to take care of the nitrites. I thought I'd add the fish and plants at about the same time so if the plants don't pick up right away at least I will have enough bacteria to handle my fish-load.

I'm getting soo impatient :o .

[mishi8]

I'd work on getting to know how to manage your filter...you're going to have to do maintenance/cleaning on it periodically, so you can't be afraid to touch it. :)

I have no personal experience with keeping aquatic plants, but raymond_h2002 has a point about planting it now, especially if you're planning on planting heavily.

[hurricanejedi]

I'd work on getting to know how to manage your filter...you're going to have to do maintenance/cleaning on it periodically, so you can't be afraid to touch it. :)

I have no personal experience with keeping aquatic plants, but raymond_h2002 has a point about planting it now, especially if you're planning on planting heavily.
I know. It was just scary...water everywhere, grasping for buckets. Heh I knwo what I would do next time though. In that 1.5 hours I learned a lot about the filter and its operation. I have to get some crushed coral tomorrow to raise my kH so I'll do it again. Maybe this time won't be as bad...or scary.

Do people relaly think I should just go ahead and order my plants? Then I suppose I would be doing a fishy cycle as I slowly add fish instead of all at once... Well I'll give it a couple more weeks I guess. I still need to buy my lights so that will get my fishless cycle more time anyway.

[raymond_h2002]

At least you learned how to work your filter.. If you felt this bad about killing off your nitrifying bacteria, I'd hate to see your reaction if this happened with a stocked tank!

Heavily planting later on would completely make waste of your fishless cycle efforts. You might as well wait until you get your plants. Most importantly, you're going to stress out fish when you shuffle around trying to plant a tank half full of water! Might as well make it easy on yourself by planting with no interfering livestock and a lower water level. That way you won't feel like you're planting against the clock.

Plus, you can add larger loads of fish at once with planted tanks without worrying about overloading bacteria.

[aklaum]

hurricanejedi,

Since we seem to be doing things somewhat in parallel :-)...I'm not sure what kind of filter you have, but when I was cycling I always made sure my filter was full of water. Mine is a hang-on-back type so when I turn it off it drains itself. I just filled it back up with a cup using tank water and then went about my water change or whatever. I did this because I read that the bacteria don't live very long out of water. Maybe you had some loss even with the filter drained for that short of a time?

Also it sounds like you are trying to buffer with a marine substance (i.e. shells, crushed coral) I know from some of my saltwater research that aragonite dissolves more readily than simple crushed coral. I too needed to buffer my tank. I simply took some fiberglass screen (typical non metal screen from Home Depot/Lowe's) and cut out a piece to make a "bag". I then filled the bag with a handful of aragonite and zip tied it shut. I threw the bag on the top layer of my filter so the water would run through it. So far my pH and alkalinity have held very steady for three weeks.

P.S. The aragonite I used was "CaribSea Seaflor Special Grade Reef Sand"

[rrkss]

hurricane jedi, one of the worst enemies for nitrifying bacteria is being dried out. 1.5 hours without water could lead to some drying of the biomedia. Since the ammonia still wen't down, you did not get a complete decimation of the population and it should bounce back rather quickly as you have noticed already. If you need to work on your canister filter, at least store the biomedia inside a bucket with water or inside the tank to keep them moist. I primarely use a canister filter for mechanical and chemical filtration on my larger setup with a penguin biowheel as my biological setup. Whenever I do maintanance on my penguin, I always float the biowheel in the tank to keep the bacteria moist. The fish don't bother the filter and it has never shut down on me with this method.

[Roan Art]

.. .I primarely use a canister filter for mechanical and chemical filtration on my larger setup with a penguin biowheel as my biological setup. Whenever I do maintanance on my penguin, I always float the biowheel in the tank to keep the bacteria moist. The fish don't bother the filter and it has never shut down on me with this method.This is the primary reason why I put Bio Wheels on my new planted tanks. You can float them while you futz with the plants and stuff and no worries about the media drying out.

You also have to consider that even if water stays in the filter like it does with my Eheim 2026, there is no circulation while it is shut off, no oxygen getting to the bacteria and they need that as well.

Roan

[Ms.Bubbles]

I imagine the plants would come really small and maybe too small to take care of the nitrites.

Plants don't really take up nitrites...they take up ammonia. If the plants eat up all the ammonia, you just won't see nitrites. IME adding plants in the middle of a cycle just confuses things. If I were you I would wait out the cycle and then add the plants, then the fish.