Cycling I think I’m close but am I ?

Hi all, back fish keeping after a long while got 2 tanks I’m fish in cycling they are Biorb 30L cold water with 6 cloud minnows in and a 125L Fluval Roma tropical with 6 Copper harlequins in, both tanks run for 2 weeks then I added fish, it seems to be taking an age to cycle ?
Info and readings for Biorb are ph 7 ammonia 0.25ppm Nitrite 0.25ppm and nitrate 20ppm been running for 3 months approx just can’t seem to get zero readings for ammonia and nitrite ?
Fluval 125L readings are ph 7.2 ammonia 0 nitrite 2ppm and nitrate 40ppm been running for 5 weeks any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated !

Hi and welcome to the forum

How do you clean the filters?
How often do you clean the filters?

You should do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate any day you have an ammonia or nitrite reading above 0ppm, or a nitrate reading above 20ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

You can add liquid filter bacteria supplements to help speed the cycling process along.

Not cleaned filter in Fluval was under the impression it’s too early ? Rinsed the Biorb sponge in tank water and use water conditioner each time I do water change, thought you shouldn’t really mess with tank to BB growing ?

Just checking you hadn't been replacing filter media.

You are correct about not cleaning the filter until after the tank has cycled. You do it if you absolutely have to, otherwise leave it alone for the first 6-8 weeks.

See the "fish-in" cycling thread here: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycle-your-tank-a-complete-guide-for-beginners.475055/

Should I wait a little longer then ? Does it look to be going in the right direction with Nitrate present ?

Jaybarstoke365 said:

Should I wait a little longer then ? Does it look to be going in the right direction with Nitrate present ?

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Any time you have ANY ammonia or nitrItes, or nitrAtes get above 20 PPM, a WC is in order, with a good quality water conditioner (Seachem Prime or API Tap Water Conditioner)

Jaybarstoke365 said:

Should I wait a little longer then ? Does it look to be going in the right direction with Nitrate present ?

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no expert by any means, but after getting back in the hobby in a similar way (small tank, 29 gallons, but suddenly had a fish in it and it wasn't fully cycled yet) I had to go back to learn and re-learn a lot of things.

3 weeks later my tank is fully cycled and I did it while the betta I was sitting was in it for the first week.

from the start the ammonia and nitrates were OK, but the nitrites were not coming down for days, I was worried that the betta was going to suffer or even die from it, it was a bear to bring down from over 5ppm. It finally got down to 2 ppm after a couple of days but stayed there. After the betta went back to his owner I started a more aggressive "seeding" of bacteria with seachem's "stability" product.

I actually had spent many hours for that whole week reading about cycling with and without fish, and I made the decision to go with a tip from soneone who basically said just double-down on the bacteria seeding indications. After a week, nitrites went down to 1 ppm, but after another week it would not budge any further. After more reading decided that large water changes were in order, so for two days in a row I changed about 30% of the water each day and added seachem with the new water. On the day after that second big water change, voila; ammonia and nitrites at zero, and nitrates at 5 ppm.

I had added 4 plants while cycling, and 3 snails when nitrites were hovering between 2 and 1 ppm.

After achieving zero ammonia and nitrites I've added 5 corys. so far, so good. nitrates have gone up from 5 to 10 ppm after the corys arrival, but ammonia and nitrites stay at zero, so the cycle is working.

per seachem's bottle indications, every time I added a fish, I did add another dose of it to the water right away and kept on that "double the dose" mantra.

So, to start the process it said one cap per 10 gal, instead I added a total of 6. After that you're supposed to do a daily dosage, I doubled it.
Did the same when adding each fish too. The recommendation is 1 cap per fish added (so each time I added a fish, I added 2 caps).

T

outofwater said:

no expert by any means, but after getting back in the hobby in a similar way (small tank, 29 gallons, but suddenly had a fish in it and it wasn't fully cycled yet) I had to go back to learn and re-learn a lot of things.

3 weeks later my tank is fully cycled and I did it while the betta I was sitting was in it for the first week.

from the start the ammonia and nitrates were OK, but the nitrites were not coming down for days, I was worried that the betta was going to suffer or even die from it, it was a bear to bring down from over 5ppm. It finally got down to 2 ppm after a couple of days but stayed there. After the betta went back to his owner I started a more aggressive "seeding" of bacteria with seachem's "stability" product.

I actually had spent many hours for that whole week reading about cycling with and without fish, and I made the decision to go with a tip from soneone who basically said just double-down on the bacteria seeding indications. After a week, nitrites went down to 1 ppm, but after another week it would not budge any further. After more reading decided that large water changes were in order, so for two days in a row I changed about 30% of the water each day and added seachem with the new water. On the day after that second big water change, voila; ammonia and nitrites at zero, and nitrates at 5 ppm.

I had added 4 plants while cycling, and 3 snails when nitrites were hovering between 2 and 1 ppm.

After achieving zero ammonia and nitrites I've added 5 corys. so far, so good. nitrates have gone up from 5 to 10 ppm after the corys arrival, but ammonia and nitrites stay at zero, so the cycle is working.

per seachem's bottle indications, every time I added a fish, I did add another dose of it to the water right away and kept on that "double the dose" mantra.

So, to start the process it said one cap per 10 gal, instead I added a total of 6. After that you're supposed to do a daily dosage, I doubled it.
Did the same when adding each fish too. The recommendation is 1 cap per fish added (so each time I added a fish, I added 2 caps).

Click to expand...

Thanks for replying with info will try seachem and up the water changes

Colin_T said:

Just checking you hadn't been replacing filter media.

You are correct about not cleaning the filter until after the tank has cycled. You do it if you absolutely have to, otherwise leave it alone for the first 6-8 weeks.

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@Colin_T
may I ask about your filter cleaning interval/method?

my aquarium has been set and cycled for nearly 4 weeks now, and I've seen comments about cleaning the filter monthly, 6-8 weeks as you said earlier, and yet others recommending that unless the flow is severely affected and/or the filter looks extremely grimy and gross; to just leave it along.

I took it upon myself to put a foam cover on the intake for the filter, and fill the filter box with similar biofoam, cut to size. I plan on keeping the biofoam basically forever. I have read and watched plenty of videos of people stating that cartridge changing is practically the companies making more money off us, and often causing newbies like me to effectively mess up a cycled tank by tossing away the bacteria with the old cartridges.

Besides the biofoam, I also added a bag of fluval zeo-carb media, and a handful of loose fluval biomax bio rings to the filter box, for good measure. @Jaybarstoke365 when I was adding the seachem, I did half the dose directly on the water, and the other half straight in the filter box/media. from what I read and understood about bacteria, it colonizes surfaces, so I thought I might as well just drop some there directly.

What type of filter do you have. I would try to arrange your media so the flow goes thru the sponge and lastly the bio-rings to reduce detritus clogging the bio-media. In my AquaClear I run (bottom to top) Inlet Pre-filter->Sponge->Poly batting->Bio-rings. I replace the cheap poly batting (from Hobby Lobby) each water change, and only rinse the sponge in tank water when it is dirty enough to visibly reduce flow.

Oblio said:

What type of filter do you have. I would try to arrange your media so the flow goes thru the sponge and lastly the bio-rings to reduce detritus clogging the bio-media. In my AquaClear I run (bottom to top) Inlet Pre-filter->Sponge->Poly batting->Bio-rings. I replace the cheap poly batting (from Hobby Lobby) each water change, and only rinse the sponge in tank water when it is dirty enough to visibly reduce flow.

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thanks for your reply.

I'm not sure about the brand, it's a hang on back. The inlet brings the water onto a small chamber that simply floods onto the bigger box. both my inlet pre-filter and the biosponge have the same texture. I cut a length of the biofoam/sponge thing and stuck it inside the inlet tube. it slowed the flow a bit, which I'm OK with because the larger/faster flow disturbed the floating plants and the betta I was pet-sitting definitely didn't like it too much. I actually like it this way too, and it seems to be working OK at the moment, with the water staying clean and I'm only on small water top-ups, which I've only needed once thus far; and plan on weekly changes of around 10% or so.

On top of the 5 corys currently there, I'm thinking of getting a male betta, a half dozen or so of neon tetras, 4 to 6 harlequin rasbora, and maybe 1 swordtail. that will be the full "neighborhood".

I'm planning on adding each type of fish at a time, maybe a week or two spaced in between, and will test water daily for 2-3 days with each addition.

I was testing daily until I achieved cycle, now I'm doing it every 3-4 days. Once I have all the fish there, I eventually plan on doing twice weekly: once right before a water change, and another one a couple of days after.

only other things I plan to add will be a coupel more plants... a mossball for sure, and some other floating plant, not sure which one yet. I've read the bettas need that, the one I was sitting definitely seemd to like to "lay down" there, and I see the corys zipping around them, plus I like natural, living plants to help with the nitrate and oxygenation.

You don't clean the filter for the first 6-8 weeks because you want the filter bacteria to establish on the filter media. They create a biofilm, which is a layer of biological organisms (bacteria, fungus, yeast, etc) that sticks to things. It takes a good month or more for the biofilm to become firmly attached to the filter media. If you wash the filter media before the biofilm has become firmly attached, you can wash the good bacteria off the media and mess up the cycling process.

Once the biofilm is there, then you should clean the filter at least once a month to minimise the gunk that collects in it. All the aquarium water is filtered through the gunk and it can make fish sick. Having clean filters with minimal gunk in them, means the fish are breathing cleaning water.

It's like having a dirty filter on an airconditioner. You can get sick because of various bad bacteria living in the filter and these get blown into the air you breath. Having a clean filter on an airconditioner means the air you breath is cleaner and less likely to contain harmful substances and microscopic organisms.

If the aquarium filter is full of gunk, then the water is being filtered through this gunk and there will be more harmful micro-organisms in it that can adversely affect the fish.

Colin_T said:

You don't clean the filter for the first 6-8 weeks because you want the filter bacteria to establish on the filter media. They create a biofilm, which is a layer of biological organisms (bacteria, fungus, yeast, etc) that sticks to things. It takes a good month or more for the biofilm to become firmly attached to the filter media. If you wash the filter media before the biofilm has become firmly attached, you can wash the good bacteria off the media and mess up the cycling process.

Once the biofilm is there, then you should clean the filter at least once a month to minimise the gunk that collects in it. All the aquarium water is filtered through the gunk and it can make fish sick. Having clean filters with minimal gunk in them, means the fish are breathing cleaning water.

It's like having a dirty filter on an airconditioner. You can get sick because of various bad bacteria living in the filter and these get blown into the air you breath. Having a clean filter on an airconditioner means the air you breath is cleaner and less likely to contain harmful substances and microscopic organisms.

If the aquarium filter is full of gunk, then the water is being filtered through this gunk and there will be more harmful micro-organisms in it that can adversely affect the fish.

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for sure, the filter has to be cleaned. I appreciate that you explained about the bateria really "settling in" after 6 to 8 weeks. I'm not touching my filter media for another month, however, I see the intake sponge I installed is collecting the bulk of the gunk/detritus. matter of fact that was the intention for using it, so that the media in the box would not get as filthy with the larger chunks of garbage. Since the water is still testing well, and it looks clear and clean; I'm not messing with it either unless the gunk gets seriously gross or starts affecting the water flow.