HELP! Cant get tank to cycle

K

knowles_101

AC Members
Jan 2, 2006
10
0
0
Hey guys Ive been trying to do a fishless cycle for about 2 months now on my 30 Gallon tank. Its setup for African Cichlids with sand and broken shells/gravel. Note I have done this before.

Here is the problem, dosing the amonia level at 2-3ppm, after 24 hours its completely gone. The Nitrites have spiked and twice now they have read 0. when this has happened I have shocked the tank to 5ppm of amonia and waited 24 hours. After retesting everything looks good with 0 amonia and 0 nitrite so I do a 90% water change. After treating the water for chlorine I wait about an hour and test the water again. PH is good at 8.2 but all of a sudden there is about 1-2ppm of amonia and the Nitrites are through the roof. This has happened twice now. Where is all this bacteria comming from.

HELP!
 
how long do you wait before adding the water into the tank and treating for chlorine?

why add 5ppm when the bacteria is only capable of processing 2-3 ppm in 24hrs? that might be causing a problem somehow.

what type of test kit are you using? do you test for nitrates?
 
Your tank isn't near a cat litter pan is it? i know when trying to cycle one of my tanks i ended up with 8.0 ppm ammonia spontaniously because my ait pump was in the stand and the cat box was only a couple feet away. Ammonia gass dissolves in water very rapidly.
 
Your chlorine treatment might be throwing your ammonia test kit off. All those bacteria that you have grown don't just disapear unless you do something drastic to kill them.

Take a gallon of water and test it for ammonia.

Then, take a gallon of water treated with that stuff you used, and test it for ammonia again.
 
I think that would be a good idea, allow what is in the tank catch up before adding more.
 
no, if you don't add ammonia when you have a 0 reading the bacteria will starve and die.
 
Are you using a de-chlorinator that handles chlorine and chloramine? If not, and if the water company uses chloramine, there's your source of ammonia.

if, if, if.....

If the ammonia released from the chloriamine exceeds what your biofilter can handle, you will definitely see the spike, as well as a nitrite spike because every time you do a w/c this way you are causing the bio-filter to try to grow to accommodate the new ammonia level. Of course once it returns to normal, teh bacteria colonies die back down to regular size.

Follow the procedure Omega suggested. If you get high levels of ammonia in treated tapwater, try a different de-chlorinator.
 
Perhaps the replacement water wasn't fully dechlorinated/dechloraminated and that killed off some of the bacteria?

Did you vacuum the gravel? A lot of the bacteria live there.
 
no they don't/ most of the bacteria live in the filter. cleaning the gravel is not going to have a detrimental effect on cycling due to bacteria loss, or any reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom