cycling questions... big surprise...

deeleywoman

deeleywoman

All men are equal before fish.
Mar 9, 2009
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Newport News, VA
www.etsy.com
ok, so, i had my tank set up for nearly two weeks before i was able to find any pure ammonia, so i used fish flakes in a (brand new) knee-high in the interim. the first few days i used the ammonia, i dosed to 5ppm, and within hours, the ammonia was down to 1ppm (or less), with nitrites at the top of the scale, and between 20 and 40 for nitrates. today, the ammonia still dropped to 1ppm, the nitrites are still at the top of the scale, and now my nitrates are climbing near 60!! i could be wrong here, but i thought that i would see my nitrites drop when nitrates showed up, not stick around. and the nitrates are growing higher? they're more than twice what they should be in the end... is all this a fluke, or well within the realm of a normal cycle?
 
Sounds normal to me.
 
The plant additions could have brought some bacteria. Hense the reason your seeing Nitrates so early.

Something like... there are some bacteria to change nitrite to nitrate. But as you can see by your nitrites, not enough, yet.

Keep watching the nitrites. They'll likely do a major drop, one day.

Then a water change and fishie nao, time.
 
bitbot said:
See, you should have put the fish flakes in a used knee-high.
:P
Click to expand...
i have a feeling that's not the sorta bacteria we're looking for lmao

my confusion was that i wasn't expecting to see such high levels of nitrite and nitrate coexisting, i guess. i guess i was thinking that when the nitrates showed up the nitrites would have vanished, or i guess that's just how the cycling articles made it sound.

*shrugs*
 
Yes, they do make it sound like that.
But remember that these changes from one chemical to another, ammonia to nitrite to nitrate, are being effected by different, independent types of bacteria. And they are going on all the time, even when readings reach 0, it's just that the ammonia and nitrite are being taken up straight away when cycling is completed. It takes a while for everything to get into balance, and in the meantime you can have readings for all 3 at the same time.
 
The nitrites are being processed into nitrates but are still not being processed fast enough to overcome the rate that they are arriving from the ammonia processing. The end result is the nitrites are staying high but some nitrates are starting to show. Don't forget that each 1 ppm of ammonia that gets processed becomes about 2 1/2 ppm of nitrite or 3 1/2 ppm of nitrates depending on how well each process is happening at the time. Early on it all becomes nitrites but as the nitrites begin to process, some of the ammonia ends up as nitrates, by way of the nitrite converting bacteria.
 
Your cycle sounds very much like mine that I just did on a new 20 gallon that I seeded with a media sponge from a 10 gallon tank.

I used pure ammonia and it took 4 days to see a drop in ammonia.
I had really high nitrite for days and days. One day it dropped a little and held there for about 3 days. I decided to test nitrate and it was about 40. I added some live plants at this point
I tested nitrite the next morning and it was 0. It dropped very sharply when it dropped.

My whole cycle took about 2 weeks starting with established media from a well stocked 10 gallon.
 
my ammonia drops from 5ppm to 1ppm or less in hours... that's the head-scratching part >.>
 
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