Water change or let the plants/ bacteria do their thing?

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

Hello!
I have a standard 29 Gallon tank (75x35x40 cm). About three days ago I finished setting it up and adding my plants. At the time I had never heard of planted cycling so I was doing a fishless cycle using fish food. I added a decent amount of fish food to get the ammonia/nitrite cycling going, and also added beneficial bacteria per the bottle's instructions. Since then I have learnt about planted cycles. So my question is should I perform a water change (and remove as much of the remaining food as I can) or leave the tank be?
My frogbit has started to grow its roots and make new leaves.

11/08/23 15:47 (Test strip)
Ammonia: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 1 ppm
Nitrate: 25 ppm

12/08/23 10:12 (Liquid Test)
Ammonia: 0.50 ppm
Nitrite: 0.25 ppm
Nitrate: 10-20 ppm

12/08/23 22:27 (Liquid test)
Ammonia: 1 ppm
Nitrite: 0.25 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm

13/08/23 16:19 (Liquid test)
Ammonia: 1 ppm
Nitrite: 0.50 ppm
Nitrate: 10-20 ppm

Essjay · Aug 13, 2023

Remind me, are you doing a plant cycle now? If you are, I'd remove the food and leave the ammonia to feed the plants. Hopefully by the time the plants have grown some, there will be some bacteria to remove the nitrite. But if there's still a nitrite reading above zero when you are ready to get fish, do a water change before fish go in.

TwoTankAmin · Aug 13, 2023

I can tell you three things quickly. You need to provide more informaiton as you will see be,ow.

1. It takes a minimal number and type of plants to do a "silent cycle" a term I dislike.

2. About the worst thing one can use an an amminia source for a fishless cycle is flake fiid, Food at all is not the way to go. There are two reasons for this/ The first is you have no control over how much ammonia is bening produce or when to add more. Second, food rotts to make ammonia. You can make a tank pretty messy this way and there ie no need. Ammonium chlorise or even store ammonia with no additives aside from some surfactants. works better.

3. You did not mention the brand od bacteria you added and most of them do no good. You need to add one that contains Nitrospira for nitrite. That bacteria is patented and only available in a couple of products.

And one more thing- some plants will not do well with elevated ammonia. But I doubt your tank will hit 2 or 3 ppm using fish food, so that may not be a problem.

If you have nitrie in a tank, you really should not beadding fish as that is a sure sign the tank is likely not cycled, In a well planted tank you do not see any nitrite and may never see nitrate as well. The reason is that the plants use ammonia in its ammonium form. The bacteria prefer ammonia as the gas. Plants can use ammonium way faster than bacteria can use ammonia.

The result is in a decently planted tank there will never be nitrite because the plants do not make it. If ther bacteria at work make it, they also use it and would make some nitrate. But if the plants do not get enough ammoniium form the wtaer, they will use nitrate, but less efficiently than ammonium. So, many planted tanks never show any nitrate. especially those with lots of plants.

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

Essjay said:
Remind me, are you doing a plant cycle now? If you are, I'd remove the food and leave the ammonia to feed the plants. Hopefully by the time the plants have grown some, there will be some bacteria to remove the nitrite. But if there's still a nitrite reading above zero when you are ready to get fish, do a water change before fish go in.

I think so. A planted cycle is what was recommended to me in another thread based in my tank. I'll remove the food shortly and replace however much water is taken out with my siphon. Won't be loads though, unless I purposely did a water change as well. I'll definitely consult with you guys again before adding any fish, just to be sure!

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

TwoTankAmin said:
I can tell you three things quickly. You need to provide more informaiton as you will see be,ow.

1. It takes a minimal number and type of plants to do a "silent cycle" a term I dislike.

2. About the worst thing one can use an an amminia source for a fishless cycle is flake fiid, Food at all is not the way to go. There are two reasons for this/ The first is you have no control over how much ammonia is bening produce or when to add more. Second, food rotts to make ammonia. You can make a tank pretty messy this way and there ie no need. Ammonium chlorise or even store ammonia with no additives aside from some surfactants. works better.

3. You did not mention the brand od bacteria you added and most of them do no good. You need to add one that contains Nitrospira for nitrite. That bacteria is patented and only available in a couple of products.

And one more thing- some plants will not do well with elevated ammonia. But I doubt your tank will hit 2 or 3 ppm using fish food, so that may not be a problem.

If you have nitrie in a tank, you really should not beadding fish as that is a sure sign the tank is likely not cycled, In a well planted tank you do not see any nitrite and may never see nitrate as well. The reason is that the plants use ammonia in its ammonium form. The bacteria prefer ammonia as the gas. Plants can use ammonium way faster than bacteria can use ammonia.

The result is in a decently planted tank there will never be nitrite because the plants do not make it. If ther bacteria at work make it, they also use it and would make some nitrate. But if the plants do not get enough ammoniium form the wtaer, they will use nitrate, but less efficiently than ammonium. So, many planted tanks never show any nitrate. especially those with lots of plants.

Thank you for such a comprehensive reply. Ammonium Chloride solution is really difficult to get in Ireland (including online orders), but I will look around and try to get some pure ammonia without any additives as you suggested.
I'll remove the physical food that is left in the tank today.
The bacteria I used was Fluval Cycle Biological Enhancer. I ordered some Seachem Flourish for the plants, and I got the Seachem brand of beneficial bacteria coming with that too.

Byron · Aug 13, 2023

Stop @rebe and take a few deep breaths. This thread is getting confused and cumbersome. Do NOT add any ammonia. Stop the fish food. Let things settle for a few days. Forget bacterial supplements.

The issue that I think has not occurred to others posting here is that you have a "plant" substrate. These often cause ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings without anything else. Let this work its way out. Don't add fish so long as ammonia and nitrite are showing up. But please do not start changing course yet again.

The fluctuating numbers for all three nitrogen forms is typical of these substrates. And presumably you have consistent readings from your source (tap) water. So let things sit for days. Get some floating plants while waiting, they will help too.

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

Byron said:
Stop @rebe and take a few deep breaths. This thread is getting confused and cumbersome. Do NOT add any ammonia. Stop the fish food. Let things settle for a few days. Forget bacterial supplements.

The issue that I think has not occurred to others posting here is that you have a "plant" substrate. These often cause ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings without anything else. Let this work its way out. Don't add fish so long as ammonia and nitrite are showing up. But please do not start changing course yet again.

The fluctuating numbers for all three nitrogen forms is typical of these substrates. And presumably you have consistent readings from your source (tap) water. So let things sit for days. Get some floating plants while waiting, they will help too.

Thanks so much Byron! I will just leave things alone then to settle as you suggest. Do you think I should still remove the remaining fish food?

Byron · Aug 13, 2023

rebe said:
Thanks so much Byron! I will just leave things alone then to settle as you suggest. Do you think I should still remove the remaining fish food?

Yes, it will only rot and fungus. It is the whatever in the substrate that is affecting all this.

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

Byron said:
Yes, it will only rot and fungus. It is the whatever in the substrate that is affecting all this.

I'll do that soon. Thank you for helping me!

TwoTankAmin · Aug 13, 2023

I did not connect your name and your other thread. I missed anything re the substrate. Byron is pretty close to on target, but the fish food is making a bit of ammonia.

The bic trick with doing a silent cycl;e is knowing that your plants are able to do the job. Do you have enough and the right kind of plants is the dividing line.

As a rule of thumb if one is goint too do a light planting, I suggest they do a fishless cycle at a slightly lower ammonia dose and then plant the tank. On the other hand, if one has enough plants to be able to do a "silent cycle," then I suggest plannting, ltetting the plants setlle in for a couple of weeks and then beging stocking gradually.

part of the issue with plantis and cycling is too much ammonia can be harmfull to some plants. So I have a tricj I developed years ago to tell me, ot amybody else, if their planted tank is rready to start having fish added.

What you do is add enough ammonia to the tank to produce 1 ppm of ammonia. If you have to use store bought ammonia you have to read the % of ammonia in it and then use the ammonia calculator here to arrive at how much to add. You can find it here https://www.fishforums.net/pages/aqcalc/ Enter your tank volume but reduce it from the advertised volume by about 10% if it is not filled to the very top and if you have things like substratem rocks and wood in it. These things displace water so the tank holds less. Use the % of ammonia on the bottle. It says 9.5 already so only change it if your ammonia is different. As for the Desired level, change the 3 ppm to 1 ppm. The answer you will get should let you know how much ammonia to add.

Add the ammonia in the morning. Test for ammonia in 12 hours or so because if it is 0, you are ready to start stocking. if it is not 0, don't panic. Test agin in another 12 hours. Then you may see the desired 0. But if tou do not see 0, then you need to wait until you do and then repeat the whole thing again. You should not see any nitrite to speak of because the ammonia the plants use will not turn to nitrite of nitrate.

If you have ammonia after 24 hours of adding it, one way to help get your tank ready for fiush would be to add a few more plants. Bear in mind that pkants actually host the bacteria. So when we add plants we are also adding some amount of bacteria. But, plants will take up ammonia faster than bacteria. So more plants will do you more good than adding bacteria.

For future reference, no matter what they say in the store you should only use Dr. Tim's Pne and Only or Tetra's Safe Start (or Safe start +). they both contain live Nitrospira bacteria and the rest do not. We need the bacteria for handling nitrite and it is patented. Dr. Tim and tetra share the patent, so they can sell the Nirtospira.

Sechem ells their bottle contains spores, The nitrifying bacteria in tanks do not form spores. Seachem makes some good products but that is not one of them.

rebe · Aug 13, 2023

TwoTankAmin said:
I did not connect your name and your other thread. I missed anything re the substrate. Byron is pretty close to on target, but the fish food is making a bit of ammonia.

The bic trick with doing a silent cycl;e is knowing that your plants are able to do the job. Do you have enough and the right kind of plants is the dividing line.

As a rule of thumb if one is goint too do a light planting, I suggest they do a fishless cycle at a slightly lower ammonia dose and then plant the tank. On the other hand, if one has enough plants to be able to do a "silent cycle," then I suggest plannting, ltetting the plants setlle in for a couple of weeks and then beging stocking gradually.

part of the issue with plantis and cycling is too much ammonia can be harmfull to some plants. So I have a tricj I developed years ago to tell me, ot amybody else, if their planted tank is rready to start having fish added.

What you do is add enough ammonia to the tank to produce 1 ppm of ammonia. If you have to use store bought ammonia you have to read the % of ammonia in it and then use the ammonia calculator here to arrive at how much to add. You can find it here https://www.fishforums.net/pages/aqcalc/ Enter your tank volume but reduce it from the advertised volume by about 10% if it is not filled to the very top and if you have things like substratem rocks and wood in it. These things displace water so the tank holds less. Use the % of ammonia on the bottle. It says 9.5 already so only change it if your ammonia is different. As for the Desired level, change the 3 ppm to 1 ppm. The answer you will get should let you know how much ammonia to add.

Add the ammonia in the morning. Test for ammonia in 12 hours or so because if it is 0, you are ready to start stocking. if it is not 0, don't panic. Test agin in another 12 hours. Then you may see the desired 0. But if tou do not see 0, then you need to wait until you do and then repeat the whole thing again. You should not see any nitrite to speak of because the ammonia the plants use will not turn to nitrite of nitrate.

If you have ammonia after 24 hours of adding it, one way to help get your tank ready for fiush would be to add a few more plants. Bear in mind that pkants actually host the bacteria. So when we add plants we are also adding some amount of bacteria. But, plants will take up ammonia faster than bacteria. So more plants will do you more good than adding bacteria.

For future reference, no matter what they say in the store you should only use Dr. Tim's Pne and Only or Tetra's Safe Start (or Safe start +). they both contain live Nitrospira bacteria and the rest do not. We need the bacteria for handling nitrite and it is patented. Dr. Tim and tetra share the patent, so they can sell the Nirtospira.

Sechem ells their bottle contains spores, The nitrifying bacteria in tanks do not form spores. Seachem makes some good products but that is not one of them.

Thank you, I probably should have linked the two threads. My other one does have a lot more information about my tank in it.
Your ammonia test sounds like a good trick! Once the plants have properly settled I'll try it before adding fish. I'll make sure to keep the amount of ammonia very low, not higher like the traditional fishless cycle method. Waiting will give the floating plants time to spread too.
In a week or so I'm going to a garden centre in Cork city, I'm pretty sure they have an aquarium section there and I'll keep an eye out for the Tetra Safe Start if I think my tank still needs it then.

TwoTankAmin · Aug 14, 2023

I would not bother with bacteria if you are planting more than minimally. The plants actually host nitrifying bacteria on them. Here is what I like to tell folks about all of this.

If one has a heavily planted tank, most, but not all of the ammonia can be handled by the plants. But there will always some amount of bacteria at work, even it if is only a little. On the other hand, one can have a tank with no bacteria and minimal algae in which case the bacteria do most of the work. The algae get some of the ammonia which is why I mentioned it.

Think of all of this as being different ways to make ammonia not to be a threat. Plants become another way of doing this, so they are helping us to accomplish the task of cycling. In my mind I see the plants and bacteria doing the same things, making a tank safe from ammonia. The difference is for plants it is one step and for bacteria it is two (ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate) and we are usually still left with the nitrate which we handle via water changes unless we have denitrifying bacteria as well.

And here is the most interesting part re the bacteria. The very ones which were discovered by Dr. Hovanec to process nitrite in tanks were not so limited. Some years ago a tank in the basement of a research lab revealed that the nitrospira bacteria know to ptocess nitrite to nitrate were also able to process ammonia straight to nitrate on their own. This went a lon way to explained why when bacterial specieas were samples that the ones doing the ammonia were only about 2% of the total of all types of bacteria.

Since I cycled my first tank in 2001 what is known about the microorganisms involve had changed a great deal. In that time another microorganism, Archaea, were discovered to process ammonia to nitrite as well. Moreover, they could thrive on much lower levels of ammonia than any of the bacteria. So many of us may not only have bacteria working on ammonia be also Archaea. In some tanks it is even possible that the Archaea are the dominant ammonia oxidizers.

(edited for spelling)

Oddball59 · Aug 15, 2023

Byron said:
Stop @rebe and take a few deep breaths. This thread is getting confused and cumbersome. Do NOT add any ammonia. Stop the fish food. Let things settle for a few days. Forget bacterial supplements.

The issue that I think has not occurred to others posting here is that you have a "plant" substrate. These often cause ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings without anything else. Let this work its way out. Don't add fish so long as ammonia and nitrite are showing up. But please do not start changing course yet again.

The fluctuating numbers for all three nitrogen forms is typical of these substrates. And presumably you have consistent readings from your source (tap) water. So let things sit for days. Get some floating plants while waiting, they will help too.

I'd add although he's probably already doing it, to use a dechlorinator. I think yours is the best post on this thread Byron. Certainly one I'd go with, although there are now substrates like Fluval Bio mass that has dormant bacteria infused in it, I'm keen to try it actually as its a very small substrate... 1 to 3 mm, so I think that could be two birds with one lump of lava rock..... nice and small to be sifted through as a top layer, over the standard substrate of which there are as you know many. Amano do a similar one, but being Amano its way to expensive.

TwoTankAmin · Aug 15, 2023

In all the years I have done planted tanks I have resfused to buy all of the fancy expensive plant stuff. My substrate has mostly been fine gravel, laterite and mulm build up. I do use Jobe's Spikes to fertilize the substrate. Very, very inexpensive way. I dispersed my pressurized CO2 via my Eheim canister and it worked fine without a diffuser or anything else. I used an inexpensive bubble counter, but a very pricey needle valve.

I used a single Tropica fertilizer in my water for many years but and now it's two. I still have T-8s or regular T-5s and power compact lighting on most of my planted tanks. When the T-8 fixtures break I have replaced them first with the T-5 and lately with inexpensive LEDs- but just on a 15 gal. and a 29 gal. In a couple of my tank where I have insanely heavy planying, shrimp and snails, I do add some SeaChem Equilibrium but at under the normal dose. I just need enough to keep these three things supplied as my tankwater doesn't have enough.

My plants do great.

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Water change or let the plants/ bacteria do their thing?

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