Low Ph While Cycling

Hello,

I have been cycling my tank for 25 days now and today I thought I would test PH/Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate.

The PH seemed abit low and was I worried my cycle would stop. Please see the results below.


What should I do to raise my PH level and how can I lower my nitrites? I have been adding approx 3ppm ammonia every 1 and half days. The tank seems to clear 3ppm in approx 16 hours.

Any advice on how to keep my cycling on track would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

you can use bicarbonate of soda to rise the ph. a water change to lower the nitrites and nitrates. what your temp at

My temp is at 28C. Should I be doing water changes in the cycling phase?

you'd be surprised how much water changes can help a cycle.

depends if you want to speed it up i did water changes when my ammonia and nitrites were 0 ing in about 15 hours. wack your temp up to 30 and put some bicarb in a tea spoon at a time i had mine about 7.6

You can not read your test results accurately unless the tube us against the white background next to the color scale and it is in reasonably good light.

One should cut the ammonia dose at least in half once nitrites appear. Not doing so usually causes a few problems especially, but not limited to, a drop the pH. The closer you get to 6.0 so, the more you will inhibit/stall the cycle. The solution normally is to do a 25% water change to lower the nitrite/nitrate and not to dose more ammonia until the level is back to 0 and then, to continue with the reduced amount. The key at this stage is to monitor nitrite levels being sure they never exceed 5ppm. If they do, again change 25% and reduce the ammonia dose further.

One way to know a tank is cycled using the dose and test method is to record the first time you dose ammonia at the start of the cycle to know how much it took to get you to the 2-3 ppm level. Later, when nitrites and ammonia zero out at the reduced dose (as above) you dose that original amount of ammonia in the evening and test ammonia and nitrite the next morning. If you read 0 ammonia and nitrite and have nitrates, you are cycled.

The thing to understand in all of this, and why you should wait over night to test in the above final test. When we fishless cycle, we dump into our tanks a biggish dose of ammonia which brings the level up fast. In an established tank with fish etc. in it, ammonia is not produced in a single big dump. Rather it is a much lower level but basically continuous output.

If one looks at some of the research involving aquariums and cycling related issues, you will see parameters from established cycled tanks. The ammonia levels are usually listed in 1/1000s of a ppm.

TwoTankAmin said:

You can not read your test results accurately unless the tube us against the white background next to the color scale and it is in reasonably good light.

One should cut the ammonia dose at least in half once nitrites appear. Not doing so usually causes a few problems especially, but not limited to, a drop the pH. The closer you get to 6.0 so, the more you will inhibit/stall the cycle. The solution normally is to do a 25% water change to lower the nitrite/nitrate and not to dose more ammonia until the level is back to 0 and then, to continue with the reduced amount. The key at this stage is to monitor nitrite levels being sure they never exceed 5ppm. If they do, again change 25% and reduce the ammonia dose further.

One way to know a tank is cycled using the dose and test method is to record the first time you dose ammonia at the start of the cycle to know how much it took to get you to the 2-3 ppm level. Later, when nitrites and ammonia zero out at the reduced dose (as above) you dose that original amount of ammonia in the evening and test ammonia and nitrite the next morning. If you read 0 ammonia and nitrite and have nitrates, you are cycled.

The thing to understand in all of this, and why you should wait over night to test in the above final test. When we fishless cycle, we dump into our tanks a biggish dose of ammonia which brings the level up fast. In an established tank with fish etc. in it, ammonia is not produced in a single big dump. Rather it is a much lower level but basically continuous output.

If one looks at some of the research involving aquariums and cycling related issues, you will see parameters from established cycled tanks. The ammonia levels are usually listed in 1/1000s of a ppm.

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Thanks for the replies. How long can the bacteria survive without Ammonia being added? I fear that when I do the water change and wait for nitrite/nitrate to drop to 0ppm the bacteria which breaks the ammonia down will have died? Also if I add Ammonia to my tank, how how long will it take to spread out in the tank so I can get an accurate reading of it? Woke up this morning and my plants dont seem to be doing to well! some leaves are turning brown and others are getting yellow spots on them and leafs are dieing as a result

Sorry to be a total noob! Further help would be great.

Thanks for your time and effort

When I cycled my tank, the ammonia was going to 0 quite fast while the nitrItes were spiking. I actually started dosing ammonia only when the nitrItes were going down to near 0 too. So redosing ammonia long time after it's been 0 won't affect it one bit. As previously suggested, I would do a large water change to bring the nitrItes to nearly 0. Then I would redose ammonia to the normal dose and wait and see what happens to the nitrItes. It may take the nitrItes 24-48 hours to nearly go to 0 and I would wait to see whether they are converting or not. More than likely they would. Then redose your normal dose ammonia.

Is your Ph normally that low? It may have crashed which happens with softer water and again, large water change to bring it back otherwise it will stall the cycle. Test 24 hours after the water change to see what value it is.
Anything below 7 will slow down or stall your cycle completely.

Thanks for your reply. My water is normally around 7.2PH. It was around 7.2 up to the last several days where it seems to have dropped.

I am going to do a water change tonight and see how it goes.

Thanks for your help!

The process of converting ammonia to nitrites naturally acidifies the water. During fishless cycle the tank is exposed to quite high ammounts of ammonia and without regular water changes the Ph may crash like yours.
Hopefully your cycle won't be going for too much longer but I would do a large water change once a week as in a normal tank with fish to keep the Ph stable.

Edit: I think at least 90% water change would be best. This would ensure you've got rid of almost all the nitrItes and nitrAtes and bring back your Ph to normal. Then you can start over with the new ammonia dose and do the waiting game

Sorry to high-jack the thread, I'm on Day 17 of my fishless cycle. Ammonia going from 4.0- 0 in 12 hrs I re-dose every 24hrs to bring ammonia back up to 4.0. Nitrites - 5.0ppm, nitrates - 20ppm P.H 7.6 currently, stable from day 1. I was lucky enough to have some mature media from a member of this forum on day 4. Are you saying that it would be beneficial to do a large water change at this point even though as my understanding goes things seem to be going fine?

Since your Ph has gone down you need to change as much water as you can to bring it back to stable 7.2
Also, this will bring the nitrItes down to nearly 0 so next time you dose ammonia the nitrItes should be within readable level, not dark purple.
It will help the cycle go faster that's all.
When I cycled my last tank I think on day 25-ish the ammonia was going down to 0 in less than 12 hours and the nitrItes were taking about 29 hours from dosing time. I actually put the fish in at this stage without any problems afterwards and I was only dosing 2ppm ammonia. So dosing ammonia and waiting for the nitrItes to go down to 0 before the next dosing may help the cycle go faster. There is a lot of info suggesting that high nitrItes may prevent the bacteria from multiplying faster. They are not naturally used to high levels of ammonia and nitrItes as the fish produce these at very low ammounts at one time.

I am not advising you to put the fish at the same as I did as it depends on the stocking you intend to put Mine is 330L tank that got stocked with 6 corys and a common pleco for a start. A couple weeks later I added 15 guppies at once with an ammonia reading of way below 0.25 for less than a day.

The bacteria can survive for quite some time without food and even when oxygen levels also drop. They have the ability to basically shut themselves down and then wait for better conditions to revive. We are talking about months not hours or days here. However, the longer they are in the shut down state, the longer it takes for them to return to full functionality. How long they can last in the shut down state is a function of how well "charged up" they are when they begin to shut down.

As long as one's pH is basically about neutral (7.0) or above, there is no risk of slowing the cycle due to pH. Even as it drops under 7.0, the result is not straight forward. Other factors are at work, so that a pH of say 6.7 or 6.8 may have some impact on tank A, but tank B may continue to cycle just fine. However, when the pH comes down fairly quickly, a matter of hours or days, the closer to 6.0 it gets, the more likely it is that the cycle will be inhibited in any tank. It takes at least 10-12 weeks from the time one has a completely cycled tank at a pH of 7.0 to be able to drop the pH to 6.0 and have some bacteria survive to form the basis of a colony able to thrive at that level.

As I have said in the past, and will continue to say, is that one does not need a ton of ammonia nor nitrites to successfully cycle a tank in a reasonable time and with minimal issues. If you read what Dr. Hovanec writes about fishless cycling he suggests even lower levels than I do and is more cautious in regards to pH levels than I am.

You want to have an initial ammonia-nitrogen concentration of 2 to 3 mg/L (ppm). Do not go above 5 mg/L.
Whatever the source of your ammonia the following is the way to proceed. Add the ammonia solution to the aquarium so that the ammonia concentration is between 2 and 3 mg/L (but, as mentioned, do not go above 5 mg/L). Record the amount of liquid you added. If you are not using DrTim’s One and Only Live Nitrifying Bacteria wait 2 or 3 days and measure the ammonia and nitrite. Continue measuring ammonia and nitrite every 2 or 3 days until you start to see some nitrite. This is a sign that the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria are starting to work. Add half the initial amount of ammonia you added to the water on day 1. Continue measuring ammonia and nitrite every 2 or 3 days. Around day 9 to 12 the ammonia will probably be below 1 mg/L, maybe even 0, but nitrite will be present. Nitrite does not spike until somewhere between days 14 and 20. You want to be careful adding more ammonia because you do not want the nitrite-nitrogen over 5 mg/L as this will start to poison the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. Add a little ammonia every few days (1/4 dose) making sure the nitrite does not go above 5 mg/L. Once you start to see the nitrite decrease it will drop pretty fast. The cycle is completed when you can add the full dose of ammonia (2 to 3 mg/L-N) and overnight it all disappears to nitrate with no sign of nitrite.

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From http/www.drtimsaquatics.com/fishless/fishless.html

There is another reason for not using higher levels of ammonia. There are a variety of ammonia oxidizing bacteria. They function best at different levels of ammonia. The ones we want in our tanks long term thrive at lowish levels. Often the ones that thrive at higher levels will be present in our tanks initially when we put in lots of ammonia (relatively speaking). But once the tank is cycled tests show these higher level ammonia eaters disappear and what remains are mostly the ones we want and need. So starting out at lower levels will get us to the proper end point faster.

Massive thanks for all the help. I will carry out a massive water change today. Thanks for your time and effort with this matter

Hello,

I did an 80% water change. Please see my results below.

My PH is has now moved up which is good. When I did the nitrite test it went very light purple to dark purple. Not sure what my current Nitrite level is now tbh. Off the chart or 5ppm?

Any advise on what to do next would be great.

Thanks for your time once again.