weird cycle

I

Invisiblefish

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Dec 7, 2009
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Hey, that's none ah yo biznuz! :p
Ok, my 8 gallon tank is about a month old now. Firstly I had some cloudyness from the sand which cleared up in a couple days. Then it was clear for about a week then it started slowly getting cloudy again. It stayed cloudy and seemed to hit it's cloudy peek about a week ago, then, after one of several 25% water change it cleared up over the next three days. Now it's nicely clear however I've been taking the chemical readings and they don't make sense to me.

The Amonia was at .25mg/l last week so I did a 25% change which brought the reading back to zero. The Nitrites are a no show so far.

I did another test this morning and the amonia reading was in between .25 and 1.5 mg/l, at about 1 mg/l at my best guess, so I did another 25% water change. Nitrites are still a no show. Tested the water after the change and amonia is back to zero and PH is at about 8.

From the research I've done the cloudyness from a bacteria bloom only occures at the END of a cycle. From the readings I'm getting it looks like my cycle has still barely started.

I'm thinking maybe I'm over doing the water changes? (they have been about every 4 days) Stunting my cycle? I'm just afraid to do them less often might kill my betta.

I'd love some opinions on what's going on here and what my course of action should be. Should I give my tank 7-8 days before the next change, even if the amonia content goes up to or over 1.5mg/l?

:huh::help2::help2::help2::huh:
 
Forget about doing water changes less often. If you are right and the tank has around 1.0 ppm of ammonia, do an immediate 75% water change. There is no reason to let your Betta splendens suffer with high ammonia water like that. You will need to unplug the heater and filter to do a proper large water change but your boy will look much better once it is finished than he does now.

Water changes are not done on a schedule, they are done whenever the need arises. You are indeed at the very beginning of your cycle and are not yet clearing the ammonia properly. When you start clearing the ammonia using the bacteria in the filter, you will start to see the nitrites climbing and wil then guide your water changes by the nitrite concentration, again it is not by time and don't be hesitant to do a big one. Whenever I manage to get a newly cloned filter into a minicycle by overstocking, I use 90% or larger water changes to control the spikes so that my fish see minimal poisons in their water. The way I judge how much water to change is by making sure the fish in the tank don't need legs to move around. As long as they can move using their fins, I have left enough old water behind.

A bacterial bloom can happen at any time, whether you are cycling or not. They are fairly common in new tanks and involve bactria that have nothing to do with the cycle. The bacteria that are involved in cycling live mostly on surfaces in a surface film. A bacterial bloom is bacteria that live as single cells in the water column.
 
Whats the ammonia reading on your tap? Liquid test kit?
 
sweetlowride said:
How did you cycle your tank? using fish?fishless? did you use any established media from another tank?
Click to expand...


I set up my tank and dumped all the old water from my betta bowl into the tank, I also put my betta into the new tank. That's how I've cycled it. The amonia kept going up every 3 to 4 days, then after that last post I did another water change and the amonia plus the nitrites have been zippo! They haven't gone up at all in the last week.

I took that for meaning my tank must have cycled so I stuck a couple zebra danios in there. I've been checking the amonia and nitrites for the last two days and they are still at zero. The PH has stayed at a steady 8. I also checked the water hardness and they are at the bottom of the scale. So, all the fish seem happy, but I'm ready to do a water change if something changes.

What confuses me is, dont the nitrites go up for like a week? I never saw them go up at all unless I missed it, but I don't see how that's possible because the amonia was still going up since I've been checking.
 
OldMan47 said:
Forget about doing water changes less often. If you are right and the tank has around 1.0 ppm of ammonia, do an immediate 75% water change. There is no reason to let your Betta splendens suffer with high ammonia water like that. You will need to unplug the heater and filter to do a proper large water change but your boy will look much better once it is finished than he does now.

Water changes are not done on a schedule, they are done whenever the need arises. You are indeed at the very beginning of your cycle and are not yet clearing the ammonia properly. When you start clearing the ammonia using the bacteria in the filter, you will start to see the nitrites climbing and wil then guide your water changes by the nitrite concentration, again it is not by time and don't be hesitant to do a big one. Whenever I manage to get a newly cloned filter into a minicycle by overstocking, I use 90% or larger water changes to control the spikes so that my fish see minimal poisons in their water. The way I judge how much water to change is by making sure the fish in the tank don't need legs to move around. As long as they can move using their fins, I have left enough old water behind.

A bacterial bloom can happen at any time, whether you are cycling or not. They are fairly common in new tanks and involve bactria that have nothing to do with the cycle. The bacteria that are involved in cycling live mostly on surfaces in a surface film. A bacterial bloom is bacteria that live as single cells in the water column.
Click to expand...

Wow, 90%! I thought doing that would stall a cycle? Doesn't the amonia have to go up a little in order for the rest of the stuff to happen?

Since that last water change my amonia has stayed at zero, it hasn't gone up at all. It's been about a week though, so I was going to go ahead and do another water change anyway.

I thought that because my readings have been at zero now for a week that my tank must have cycled so I put a couple zebras in there. It's been about three days with them in there, readings are still zero.

You know, I'm thinking maybe there is something wrong with my nitrite test kit. Is that even possible? I just bought the thing as part of a master test kit a couple weeks ago.

I'll keep testing my water daily and post if anything changes I guess.


Thanks to everyone, keep the info coming if you have any idea what's going on here. I still at a bit of a loss.
 
Sure there COULD be a problem with your test kit, but it's unlikely. Since you started with used aquarium water (and I'm assuming some of the gravel and decor maybe?) it's quite possible that you had both ammonia bacteria and nitrite bacteria growing at the same time and therefore got the rapid cycle. It sounds to me like your tank is completely cycled. (Based only on what you've posted here ... I could be mistaken, of course.)

If you do a cycle completely from scratch, you have to wait for the ammonia bacteria to establish and start producing significant nitrites, only THEN will the nitrite bacteria begin to grow. It sounds like you managed to get both of those stages processed simultaneously.
 
did you use a bactirial starter? it helps a lot and if your amonia is high you should take your fish out 'cause you are like killing it slowly if the levels are above 0 mg/l. and if the amonia levels are hight you can buy a chemical to chang the toxic amonia to non-toxic
 
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