View Full Version : Very long fishless cycle.
grace
04-17-2003, 12:33 PM
I did a search and couldn't find quite this problem, so here goes...
At the end of Feb. I started a 6gal. Eclipse for use as a hospital/quarentine tank using the fishless cycle for the first time. Well...it's now mid-April and I have yet to have a nitrite spike :confused: . What's going on?? There were a few days when I couldn't get to it, so I'm sure that didn't help, but other than that I have been keeping the ammonia at 4ppm. In the last couple of days it has been dropping lower when I check it each day (does that make any sense??).
So...what the heck did I do wrong??
Oh yeah, I seeded it with a sponge filter from my other tank.
wetmanNY
04-17-2003, 12:49 PM
When the system eats up 4 or 5 ppm ammonia in twenty-four hours and there are no detectable nitrites, it's cycled.
Is this quarantine tank empty, BTW? I mean does it have a bare floor, and just the sponge filter, as many QTanks do? When I'm not actually medicating, my QTank is pretty much a plant nursery. It stays cycled that way. All the green bits and pieces go into a windowside bowl when plant-ravaging meds are going to be used.
Yea, it's empty. And wouldn't you know it, I just did a rearrange and cleanout of plants on my big tank. I threw away a bunch of crypts. that would have served very nicely!! Ugh.
So anyway...
What you're telling me is that this tank has probably been cycled for, like, weeks and I just keep adding more ammonia :p. How come I didn't see a NO2 spike? I check everyday. I guess I'll check the NO3 tonight. I would think there would be a significant increase in that at this point, right?
Only if the NH3 is dropping to 0 every day. And the NO2 stays 0. And the nitrate is very high.
What is the pH of the tank?
wetmanNY
04-17-2003, 3:58 PM
Sometimes a Quarantine tank is pretty much a bare box of water. It's not the water that gets cycled, it's all the natural surfaces of plant leaves, gravel, sand, silt, lateritic clay, accumulating floc and compost, filter media etc.
You might not have enough in this tank to cycle with, aside from the filter sponge. The more natural surfaces, the more biofilm, the more nitrification...
I trade small Java Fern for worms and such. I have the less familiar small-size Java Fern too. Too good to ever throw out even a smidgen of it. I fold a plant weight into a U-shape, slide bits of leafed-out root inside, and drop them inconspicuously where they'll get some light. When I rediscover them months later and pull them apart, they've turned into respectable little ferns...
Thanks for the replies!
Checked the pH (something I hadn't thought to do) and it's at least 7.6 - at the highest it reads. I don't have a high end pH kit, so of course it could be higher. What does a high pH tell me? (this is something I should probably know as I do chemistry for a living! :p ) The ammonia is currently at about 2-3ppm; it's hard to say as the color thing goes from one to four :rolleyes:. I did not add ammonia last night as it was reading 4ppm from the addition the day before (Tuesday).
I will add at least one of the crypts I left in the other tank. I'm sure it will look better if nothing else! ;)
So...now what??
Some long-cycle tanks drop to low pH levels where the nitrifiers are not turning over very fast - down at pH 5.5 to 6.0 or below - due to low KH being burned up by the process and the tank crashing due to inadequate buffer. This is not your problem at all, you are still up there.