waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Hi SensesFail,
OK, I've just read back through and tried to work on some things. I wasn't familiar with the Aquis 1050 but the top google result happened to be a handy thread right here in our own forum where member "Nobody of the Goat" had posted a link to the filter manual online, very handy! It sure looks like a bog standard (love that term, Miss Wiggle always used to use it, lol, must be UK) external cannister filter. I assume you are using the stock media suggestion? (noodles (ceramic rings) in the bottom, blue sponge above that, then next tray up black spong and finally "wool pad" (I wonder if that's another UKism for pad of polyfloss?) Anyway is that what you have?
K's post spurs me to a couple of thoughts - is it possible the Biomature might have actually -clogged- one of the media layers or something? Its possible we should consider checking inside the filter but maybe we should do that just a little farther down the road. At the moment I agree with K, what I'm seeing in your latest is that -finally- had a long slow downward slide in ammonia and when it got down to 1.2ppm you recharged the ammonia to 5, where its been for 2 days. Is this correct, is this where we are? If so then your fishless cycle -is- displaying a pattern I've seen before where its finally off to a start but there is some sort of factor making the reproductive rate of the Nitrosomonas very slow compared to usual.
I feel the plan should be to proceed through next week and if we see no drop in ammonia whatsoever we'll take an action, whereas if we do see a drop we should try to judge whether that drop is faster than before or the same. If there is no drop or if the rate is just as slow then I think we should take the disruptive action of looking inside the filter. The way we do this of course is in the middle of a gravel-clean-water-change (sound familiar?) We always drain to a catch-bucket so we have some current tank water in which to examine our filter media. During a fishless cycle we would want only the most gentle dunking of media in this bucket water, so that we determine if the main sponge (the blue one I'd guess) was somehow clogged and if it was it would get a gentle squeeze (or, of course, we're also trying to see if there is something major wrong here, a true clog for instance)... all this is probably unlikely and the real culprit is some invisible chemistry thing we can't measure (eg. your town's water has some trace mineral/chemical in high enough quantity that the bacteria don't like it (great for humans, bad for bacteria!)
Like I suggest though, I think we should first go the "do not disturb" route in case that first slow drop in ammonia was the beginning of something good finally. Some people get their horrible stage over with during the first stage and then don't have as much trouble with the other two stages and that might be you. You appear to be doing the most important things right: temp is 29C, pH is 8, ammonia has no soaps, surfactants, dyes or fragrances I assume.. all that. And, as always, remind us again how many days total in this latest attempt (I hate dates because "day x" allows me to cruise through more cases in a morning without doing so much searching and calculating - there are usually a dozen or more beginners with problems, at least sometimes.)
~~waterdrop~~
OK, I've just read back through and tried to work on some things. I wasn't familiar with the Aquis 1050 but the top google result happened to be a handy thread right here in our own forum where member "Nobody of the Goat" had posted a link to the filter manual online, very handy! It sure looks like a bog standard (love that term, Miss Wiggle always used to use it, lol, must be UK) external cannister filter. I assume you are using the stock media suggestion? (noodles (ceramic rings) in the bottom, blue sponge above that, then next tray up black spong and finally "wool pad" (I wonder if that's another UKism for pad of polyfloss?) Anyway is that what you have?
K's post spurs me to a couple of thoughts - is it possible the Biomature might have actually -clogged- one of the media layers or something? Its possible we should consider checking inside the filter but maybe we should do that just a little farther down the road. At the moment I agree with K, what I'm seeing in your latest is that -finally- had a long slow downward slide in ammonia and when it got down to 1.2ppm you recharged the ammonia to 5, where its been for 2 days. Is this correct, is this where we are? If so then your fishless cycle -is- displaying a pattern I've seen before where its finally off to a start but there is some sort of factor making the reproductive rate of the Nitrosomonas very slow compared to usual.
I feel the plan should be to proceed through next week and if we see no drop in ammonia whatsoever we'll take an action, whereas if we do see a drop we should try to judge whether that drop is faster than before or the same. If there is no drop or if the rate is just as slow then I think we should take the disruptive action of looking inside the filter. The way we do this of course is in the middle of a gravel-clean-water-change (sound familiar?) We always drain to a catch-bucket so we have some current tank water in which to examine our filter media. During a fishless cycle we would want only the most gentle dunking of media in this bucket water, so that we determine if the main sponge (the blue one I'd guess) was somehow clogged and if it was it would get a gentle squeeze (or, of course, we're also trying to see if there is something major wrong here, a true clog for instance)... all this is probably unlikely and the real culprit is some invisible chemistry thing we can't measure (eg. your town's water has some trace mineral/chemical in high enough quantity that the bacteria don't like it (great for humans, bad for bacteria!)
Like I suggest though, I think we should first go the "do not disturb" route in case that first slow drop in ammonia was the beginning of something good finally. Some people get their horrible stage over with during the first stage and then don't have as much trouble with the other two stages and that might be you. You appear to be doing the most important things right: temp is 29C, pH is 8, ammonia has no soaps, surfactants, dyes or fragrances I assume.. all that. And, as always, remind us again how many days total in this latest attempt (I hate dates because "day x" allows me to cruise through more cases in a morning without doing so much searching and calculating - there are usually a dozen or more beginners with problems, at least sometimes.)
~~waterdrop~~
D i really hope it hap penes soon! But time will tell hey it could be my new years resolution! To buy some fish 
