Cycling 3 weeks with fish

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Apr 2, 2002
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Are you sure you used the freshwater color card and not the SW one, Both are included with the ammonia test kit. The master test kit is for Freshwater so it only provides the chart for that.



Keep us posted. I would hope the ammonia would start to come down rather than increasing. If it were going to do that, I think it would have done so already.

The pH at 7.8 changes that NH3 number really fast. Glad you caught it.

Clearly your water was pretty acid. The cycle itself is acid and that is one of the reasons why regular water changes are good idea in most FW tanks.

Also, doing a fish in cycle means you may have to do occasional water changes. Nitrate will accumulate. In a fishless cycle this is not a problem, but with fish it is. If one has to do a water change during a fishless cycle one can replace the ammonia removed, but with fish-in a tank, this is not possible.

Keep posting your numbers. I really want to see ammonia moving the opposite way is has been. Every now and then check for nitrite and nitrate. You may want to reduce the amount of coral which should help to lower the pH a few .10ths.
 

mommy2girls!

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Jul 31, 2022
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I threw out the saltwater card a long time ago so there wouldn’t be any confusions. After the pwc in the wee hours of the morning I added a dose of QuickStart. Figured it wouldn’t help but worth a shot. Ammonia is now about 1.5ppm. The QuickStart says it limits toxic ammonia. I think this means it ionizes the ammonia turning it into ammonium and therefore the api ta test would still detect it. So the .25ppm drop throughout the morning must have came from the pwc not having time to completely circulate in the tank before testing. Nitrites are still 0. NH3 is reading 0.0626 so I’m going to do another 2 gallon wc and remove 1/4 of the coral. I won’t add anything except dechlor since it’s been less than 24 hrs. Everybody was starving when I fed a few crumbs this morning. It always relieves a little stress when I see them so active and eating. And yes I mean crumbs like 1 flake broke into 5 or so pieces to share. I wish for their sake the ammonia would go down already. But at least Cheetos gills are not as red now. It turns out it wasn’t my imagination.
 
Apr 2, 2002
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I would not use QuickStart if it were given to me for free. I would not use it if they offered to pay me to do so. I believe I stated this early on in this thread.

Yes it can hurt what you are tyring to do. So it is time for a bit more biology. Bacteria are living things. They can die. When they die they do what anything else organic does- creates ammonia. Because of the patent protections on the specifc bacterial, especially the ones which handle nitrite, they are not in any other starters besides One and Only and SafeStart.

Not all bacteria are the same when it comes to handling ammonia and nitrite. What differentiates them is how much ammonia they need to survive and thrive. The bacteria we end up with in our tanks are ones which can thrive on lower levels of ammonia and nitrite. Aquariums do not produce the levels of ammonia or nitrite that waste water treatment plants handle. As a result the bacteria in waste treatment and in aquariums, though they do similar things, are not the same.

The research shows that when the starter bacteria used are not the proper ones the cycle takes the same amount of time and in the end the added bacteria are mostly gone and have been replaced by the ones which will be there over the years. Even when the ammonia ones are correct, there is still a big difference between what is in sw tanks v.s. freshwater ones.

Grommen, Roeland, Lenny Dauw, and Willy Verstraete. "Elevated salinity selects for a less diverse ammonia-oxidizing population in aquarium biofilters." FEMS microbiology ecology 52, no. 1 (2005): 1-11.

Abstract

The activity and changes in the structure of the community of the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria belonging to the Betaproteobacteria were monitored in freshwater and artificial seawater biofilters for two months after inoculation with a commercial nitrifying consortium. Both in freshwater and artificial seawater, ammonium oxidation proceeded immediately after addition of the inoculum, although initial activity in artificial seawater was lower than in freshwater. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of the ammonia-oxidizing bacterial community of the inoculum and the freshwater and the artificial seawater aquaria as a function of time showed that initially only one dominant ammonia-oxidizer, closely related to Nitrosomonas marina, was detectable in all the systems. The fingerprint of the ammonia-oxidizing bacterial community in the artificial seawater biofilters continued to be dominated by this single band. In the freshwater aquaria, in contrast, the composition of the ammonia-oxidizer community became more diverse after one month, with 4–7 new bands appearing in the denaturing gradient gel fingerprint. Since the inoculum is cultivated at an average salinity of 11 g 1−1, it is argued that the elevated salinity selects for a less diverse ammonia-oxidizer community in the inoculum and the artificial seawater aquaria.

from https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/52/1/1/481716
I am happy to help you, but not if you are going to do what comes into your mind ot because you got different advice. Further, I never insist one does things my way. That choice is not mine to make. However, I am also not willing to waste my time trying to help if one is going to listen to other advice which contradicts mine. So I will tell you what I have told every beginner in the hobby dealing with cycling and getting help with it. When you hear multiple differing opinions coming from different people, the best thing to do is to pick one person and to follow their advice. Shut out the rest.

That way you will quickly discover one of two things. Either what they say will and should happen does or else it does not. Either way one learns form the experience. If what one does works as planned then they learn how to do the thing so it works out, or, if it fails, they learn what does not work. However, when one tries to listen to differing voices/methods and tries to combine them, one becomes more likely to fail.

So it is up to you if would want to do things as I suggest or if you prefer to listen to other people instead. I will not be upset if you prefer listening to other advice instead of mine, that is life. I am not the only one around who can help and there are usually several good ways to do anything in the hobby.

If you believe you have a better way of doing the cycling or if you have somebody else who you feel is more qualified and experienced to help you, I am happy to back off with no hard feelings. An important part of all of this is not to get confused because there are so many voices out there saying different things.

I do not believe in doing fish in cycling. This is especially true for those new to the hobby. My first tank was a fish in cycle. The 150+ tanks I have cycled since have all been without fish. I wrote 3 cycling articles, none were about how to cycle with fish. The two fish in articles I wrote were on how to undo the mess of a fishless cycle which has gone off the rails.
 

mommy2girls!

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Jul 31, 2022
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Oh wow I was a little upset by reading this. I am so sorry if you felt that I was taking advice contradictory to yours or not following directions. You are much more knowledgeable about fish than I am. I do investigate and research everything that is said simply because I like to completely understand what is happening. I reread all your messages multiple times. On Thursday you said “I am thinking that whatever is in Quickstart is handling nitrite. I am also thinking that the reason is even yhough it is thw wrong bacteria for the long term, it will work in the short term. What will happen is the API bacteria will die back and be replaced with the ones which will be in the tank longer term. I am also thinking that the ammonia ones are somewhat similar.” From this statement I assumed that it would not hurt anything by trying it one more time as a last ditch effort to save our fish. I would have never done this torture to any living thing on purpose. I am so ashamed that I was fooled into thinking that I could add the fish right away. If I could change it I would. But for now there is only one way to go. Please I look for your messages multiple times a day just to validate that I’m doing everything in my power to help them. Today is supposed to be our last day of the heat wave. Tank temp is 82. I’m still leaving the lid off trying to not let them overheat. I took out 1/4 of the coral as you suggested but the ph is back up to 7.8 after the last wc last night. Ta is 1ppm with 0.0435 NH3 gh is 3 and kh is 2. Should I remove more coral? Also I think I’ll need to do another wc today being NH3 is so close to the limit. Thank you for your time and patience.
 

mommy2girls!

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Also I have been looking for the one and only. No stores carry it locally. I can order on Amazon but the reviews say that with our heatwave the bottles are near boiled in the trucks and therefore don’t work properly. I found a website that will ship live filters but it requires next day shipping to keep it protected and will cost $65 with shipping. Any advice on that? How likely would the bb survive?
 
Apr 2, 2002
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If it is packed properly, yes it will survive. That bacteria cannot be frozen or they will die. They can not spend much time at 104 or above or they will die. You can order from Dr. Tim directly but he sells for more than Amazon, but he will package it to keep it alive.

The problem with the API product is there is a difference between one does and adding more and more, especially if water is rarely changed.

You were doing everything fine why did you want to add more of the API junk? Your NH3 level was safe until the last reading. And I did warn you to watch that as you added crushed coral. When you change the pH of the water that will change the concentration of NH3. The higher the pH and/or the water temp. The more of the ammonia that will be in the nH3 form.

So I will say this again. Do not add more chemicals. Dechlor is OK to use. If the TA goes above 2 ppm even with the NH3 under .05 ppm. you need to change some water after a few days. The goal is to do this only when necessary. And those numbers mean nothing if the behavior of the fish indicates they are stressed and not happy with the ammonia level. if you ever see nitrite the solution for that is salt, not water changes.

There is a tendency when we start in the hobby to overthink things. One of the hardest skills to learn is patience. The first test of this is cycling. It goes as fast as it goes. Sometimes it can be faster and other slower. But as long as it is moving forward, that is the goal.

Fish always beg for feed as soon as they learn how. I have clown loaches now that are 10-12 inches. They are always at the surface near where I normally drop the food in as soon as they think I may be about to do that. My Altum angels are the same. Almost any fish that swims mid or upper level will for sure learn to do this and some will even come up off the bottom at feeding time. I can also tell you that fish can go days with no food and be fine. It is only newborns and younger ones which need more regular feeding. I normally have one starve day a week except for tanks with fry or grow tanks with youngsters.

I do not think you need to add anything more to the tank to get it to cycle faster. Just keep it safe for the fish. That means:
- TA 2 ppm or below. If it is a tad over 2 for a day or two and NH3 is under .05 ppm, you can wait.
- You should not wait no matter what readings you are getting if the fish show signs of stress etc.
- Monitor as directed. Water change for ammonia, salt for nitrite and water change if the nitrate exceeds 40ppm.
- Most water changes will need to be between 25 and 50% depending on the ppm number from which you are starting.

Pouring more API stuff in the water means more stuff slowing down the arrival of the desired strains of the bacteria. The research on this shows that most of the wrong bacteria are gone and have been replaced with the desired ones at the end of the cycle.

Finally, everything about the cycle from start to finish is determined by ammonia. How much we should add for a fishless cycle is clear. There is a max. level never to exceed and the same is true for nitrite. But the cause of too much nitrite is too much ammonia. In fishless when we screw up nothing is hurt but our pride and we end up taking longer to get the cycling done. But with fish in cycling there is little room for error. there is also a correct way for doing one, but this is really not for new fish keepers. I got into the hobby at the start of 2001. I had not researched enough to discover fishless cycleing. When I did, I learned it appeared to have gained some following in about 1996-97. I discovered it late 2001 or early 2002.


Koga, James S. Use Household Ammonia to Humanely Cycle a Tank. Freshwater and Marine Aquarium, 19, no. 4 (December 1996): 213-214.

Page Created by:
James S. Koga
jskoga@cpp.edu
Updates:
Major: September 2003
Minor: August 11, 2005
Minor: February 20, 2015
Minor: April 12, 2011
Minor: May 14, 2014
Minor: Feb 20, 2015
https://www.cpp.edu/~jskoga/Aquariums/Ammonia.html

and

Fishless Cycling
by Chris Cow, Ph.D.
Ph.D. Organic Chemistry

Last Update: 22 July 2017
Web Author: M. K. Oliver, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1997-2021 by M. K. Oliver, Ph.D.

https://malawicichlids.com/mw01017.htm
 

mommy2girls!

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Jul 31, 2022
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Ok I’m going to throw out the QuickStart. No use holding on to it. I won’t add anything more to tank. It’s just real hard knowing that those poor fish are sitting in water that is hurting them either now or long term. I took out another tablespoon of coral today. Ph is still holding at 7.8 i must have some extra strong coral. I didn’t do a wc yesterday but today I had to. NH3 was .06 so I changed 2 gallon. Still no nitrites or nitrates. Thanks again for all your help
 
Apr 2, 2002
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I do not understand why no nitrate. I understand why no nitrite. It is there but should be converted to nitrate as fast as it is created.

I would change more water than 2 gals. It isn't leaving you enough room for ammonia to go up again. Change at least 1/3 of the water in the tank and you can go as high as 50%. It will be fine to have TA reduced to 1 ppm when you need to lower it.
 

mommy2girls!

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Jul 31, 2022
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Temp is 79degrees. 1ppm ammonia 7.8PH GH3 KH2 nitrite and nitrates both 0. Should I do that larger water change now or wait for the ammonia to go back up?
 

mommy2girls!

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Jul 31, 2022
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I also realized a few days ago that my air tube was looking a little opaque. Today I got the nerve to touch it to see what it was. I thought it was inside the tube. It is not. It is some kind of white buildup that wipes off easily with my finger. Is it something I should wipe off or is it something good? Bb??? Please. Probably wishful thinking ?
 
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