How can I have both ammonia and nitrates?

[ghart999]

Hi all. I just cycled by first tank with bio-spira 2 days ago. I the pack that is good for up to 90 gallons. I have a 65G tank. The pack was just received into my LFS 2 days earlier. Was kept refrigerated and added to the tank within 1 hour of picking it up. Pack was thoroughly shaken and added to the tank. I ever rinsed the bag out with tank water. I next added 15 starter fish consisting of zebra danios and glolight tetras. After 24 hours I had .5 ammonia, o nitrites and 2-3 nitrates. At 54 hours I still have .5 ammonia, 0 nitrates and 5 nitrates. How is this possible? I thought if you had nitrates, your ammonia and nitrites would always be zero.

I assume that since I have nitrates, that the bio-spira is working. Just maybe not finished yet? Does this all sound OK to you? Thanks a lot.

Also I used Prime when I filled the tank with water.

 

[fsn77]

No, having nitrAtes doesn't mean that ammonia and nitrItes are zero. Since you have ammonia, it means the bacteria population that breaks down ammonia has not grown large enough to handle it all yet.

 

[clawlan]

I am just barely getting over a similar problem with bio-spira. My tank had very high ammonia, no nitrites, and some nitrates. To me it seems like the nitrite eating bacteria was fine but not enough ammonia eating bacteria. I had to do several water changes and the ammonia eventually went down.

 

[ghart999]

I heard that ideally I should wait 10 days before doing a PWC after adding bio-spira to make surte the bacteria has time to stick to the media. Do you agree or should I do one now?

 

[donfenk]

I have an issue with bio-spira - how can you be sure there are active bateria - what temperature was this stuff shipped at and stored at before it got the the shelves of the LFS? I agree that it cant hurt to add it to help establish a colony but the best way to be sure is to wait to add fish. set up you tank add a source of ammonia and let the tank do its thing. Also adding fish slowly and not adding all your fish on the first day is another way to avoid problems. Just because a tank is cycled does not mean it can handle the load of 20 fish all at once - do that and you will still see an ammonia spike.

When adding Bio-Spira i have added it directly into the filter input to ensure that it would go through the media first - figured this was the best shot at getting it going in the right spot.

 

[clawlan]

I have an issue with bio-spira - how can you be sure there are active bateria - what temperature was this stuff shipped at and stored at before it got the the shelves of the LFS? I agree that it cant hurt to add it to help establish a colony but the best way to be sure is to wait to add fish. set up you tank add a source of ammonia and let the tank do its thing. Also adding fish slowly and not adding all your fish on the first day is another way to avoid problems. Just because a tank is cycled does not mean it can handle the load of 20 fish all at once - do that and you will still see an ammonia spike.

When adding Bio-Spira i have added it directly into the filter input to ensure that it would go through the media first - figured this was the best shot at getting it going in the right spot.

very good comments. And as for a partial water change, i would probably wait so that you aren't changing out the bacteria that you just added. Bio-spira recommends that you add bio-safe which removes ammonia. I would probably do that. Then do a water changes in a few days. Remember though that bio-safe and other chemicals can give you false positives for ammonia, check out the thread I currently started about that topic...