Cycle Crashed

Hi!
So I screwed up and crashed my cycle a couple of days ago while preforming a large wc. I've added Prime and Stability. I will also be adding Dr. Tim's BB this afternoon as soon as it's delivered. I currently have 2 AquaClear 100's and a very large sponge filter in my 75gal freshwater tank. It currently houses 5 Dojo Loaches, 8 Corydoras and 2 BN Plecos. It's been running since November of last year without any issues or losses (YAY!) lol.
My question is. Since I've already killed the BB, would it be okay to thoroughly wash/rinse the filter media and housing in regular tap water or does it have to be treated? The HOB'S have been cleaned once a few months ago since startup.
Thanks in advance for your help!!

How did you crash that ?

What happened that makes you think you have killed your BB's ? What are your readings atm ?

Once established, I changed substrate with minimal disruption in the filters, Nitrite processing bacteria are nearly invincible. But the ones dealing with ammonia are a little more sensible but they come back fast.

I rinse mechanical filtration media directly under the tap all the time, but never biological.

I do big water changes every week, but it doesn't kill the beneficial bacteria. There are reasons that ammonia can spike without the bacteria being killed off. Maybe that happened?

I wouldn't mess with whatever biological media you have- you don't want to kill off what's left. Also, I'd just do water changes and watch the levels until it's back on track rather than trying to re-cycle the tank- I mean, unless you just pulled everything out of your filters and got rid of your plants.

Typically, when refilling the tank, I use buckets to treat the water and then pour it in. The other day, I treated the tank first and then filled it directly from the tap. I've done this before without any issues. Well stupid me, instead of turning the water off first, I turned the filters back on approximately 5 minutes or so before removing the water hose. It didn't even hit me what I had done until I tested the water several hours later. Amon .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0.
I did remove the decor and washed them in treated tap water. I also permanently removed the plastic plants due to some kind of algea growing on them. I do have Anacharis in the tank.
When I tested the water late last night, AMON .50, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, PH 6. I also added 1 3/4 tsp of baking soda trying to adjust the PH. I feel like such an idiot

I vary between adding the de-chlorinator after I add the water or adding it to one of the buckets while changing the water- depending on the tank. If you added the dechlorinator after adding the water, that won't kill anything.

I would just monitor the ammonia and nitrite levels every day and do smaller water changes to keep it down. I would be really surprised if you adding dechlorinator after turning your filter on had any negative effect.

Maybe you fed too much or those dang plecos pooped more than usual?

The best method is to dose the tank for the whole volume even if you change half the water. if temperature and chemistry matches, It's supposed to be successful.

Don't worry too much about the ammo, it can occur but like I said before they will come back fast. You may have to do water changes, the tank is still fertile.

But when you are reaching that point. don't Sterilize decor even plastic plants. they are holding the stuff you want.

Vacuum the bottom, remove the mulm, secondary mechanical filtration, that's what you want going out.

Secondary Fine Mechanical Filtration. Do everything you can to have it, with easy maintenance, in the long run they keep a lot of algae spores and mulm out of the water layer they also help a lot with crustaceans, bacterias and any physical crap rotating in.

I try to have an intake filter that prevent fry's to be sucked in, a large amount of loose bio media and small piece of mechanical near the output As long as you can keep both end easily without disturbing the biological section.

I think that is going very well for me... But I tried to flush them and they colonized the toilet

You will not be happy to hear what I am about to say. Most of what you did yo try and "fix" things likely is what caused the ammonia.

Chloramine, when there is any ammonia around does not. kill the bacteria, it just puts them to sleep. As soon as ammonia is available again, they wake up and go back to work.

The bacteria live in a biofilm they create and it protects them from a lot of things. It takes chlorine 24 hours to fully penetrate the biofilm in order to kill the bacteria living in it. I know folks who rinse out their bio-media in their chlorinated tap water. The concentration of chlorine that might be in tap water is pretty low. So, when one rinses media under it and returnes it to the filter and then refills the tank with water that has the porper amount of dechlor added to it or the tank, it will quickly neutralize the tiny amount of chlorine that mat have been inthe media when you returned it to the filter.

Next, when one is doing a fishless cycle it is always a good idea to use a dechlor that does not detoxify ammonia. The reason is that ammonia detox is accomplished by converting it into ammonium. The bacteria want ammonia but they can handle ammonium. The problem is that they do so much less effciciently than they use ammonia. This slows a cycle.

You wasted your money on the Stability, and maybe the Dr. Tim's as well. But his is the choice in bottled bacteria because the Nitrospira it constains are patented and he and Tetra share the patent. Stability does not contain any live bacteria, it contains spores. What is in the Dr. Tim's bottle will be present in your tank for a very long time, what is in stability will not be there in short order in terms of handling nitrogen.

The nitrifying bacteria live all over one's tank on the hard surfaces. However, the bacteria are somewhat photophobic so they thrive where it is on the darker side. This is one reason why the material of which filters are made is not clear. So cleaning the decor likely killed or removed any bacteria living on the under or insides.

One last thing here. Ammonia (NH3) is a gas which can be dissolved in water, When it is, most of it turns into ammonium (NH4) which is way way less toxic than NH3. How much ot the Total Ammonia (TA) is in ones water, that is how much is in each form, depend on the pH and tempertature of the water, but the pH matter much more. As a rule the higher the pH and temperature, the more of the TA will be in the toxic NH3 form. You did not report your parameters so I ran a couple of simulations on your reported .25 and .50. The goal is to make sure the ammonia as NH3 is never much higher than 0.05 ppm.

So I will assume the worst case likely to be your parameters for pH and Temp. and you have 0.25 ppm TA"

- If the pH is 7.0 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0013 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0016 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 7.5 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0041 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0051 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 8.0 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0013 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0016 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 8.5 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0126 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0155 ppm. No action needed.

And lets run the above at 0.50 ppm of TA:

- If the pH is 7.0 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0026 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0033 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 7.5 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0083 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0102 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 8.0 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0252 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0310 ppm. No action needed.
- If the pH is 8.5 and the temp is 75F, then the NH3 is 0.0719 ppm. At 80F it is 0.0864 ppm. Do a 50% WC.

The odds are decent that the fish you have could handle the red levels above for at least a few hours if not a day or two. Ammonium may be less toxic, but it can still harm fish at much higher levels than above and/or a way longer exposure time. And I use a pretty conservative number for where to put the ammonia red line to keep fish safe.

Finally, under optimal conditions the nitrifying bacteria can double in about 8 hours for the ammonia ones and about 13 for the nitrite ones.

edited for the many typos

Coolysd said:

Typically, when refilling the tank, I use buckets to treat the water and then pour it in. The other day, I treated the tank first and then filled it directly from the tap. I've done this before without any issues. Well stupid me, instead of turning the water off first, I turned the filters back on approximately 5 minutes or so before removing the water hose. It didn't even hit me what I had done until I tested the water several hours later. Amon .25, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0.
I did remove the decor and washed them in treated tap water. I also permanently removed the plastic plants due to some kind of algea growing on them. I do have Anacharis in the tank.
When I tested the water late last night, AMON .50, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, PH 6. I also added 1 3/4 tsp of baking soda trying to adjust the PH. I feel like such an idiot

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I have done what you wrote and never had a problem like you saw. Is your tap water chlorine very high or do you have chloramine in your water? My tap water chlorine level is low so maybe why I havent had any issues.

The ammonia might be coming from somewhere else, like uneaten food or a dead fish.
Fluval has a new product that is like Goop in Europe and I would add that in. I saw it stocked in my local Petsmart and it looks good.
Fluval Cycle Biological Enhancer

The label on my bottle is different, But it surely is enhancing things.

Fluval Biological Enhancer

This got my tank cycled in 2 weeks.

If you have chloramine in the tap water, the ammonia in the tank could be from that. When you dechlorinate tap water that has chloramine in, you break the chlorine ammonia bond and neutralise the chlorine part. The free ammonia is left behind and can be measured as ammonia with a test kit. Most dechlorinaters used for chloramine will also bind to the free ammonia and make it harmless for about 24 hours so the filters can take it up without the fish dying from it.

If you have ammonia in an aquarium that contains livestock (fish, shrimp, snails, etc), you don't want the pH above 7.0 because ammonia becomes more toxic in water with a pH above 7.0

THANK YOU for all of this very helpful info!! Definitely made me "less crazy" lol
I think what happened is the lack of proper maintenance due to dealing with a shoulder injury. I had been regularly testing the water and everything was fine. Until it wasn't . The PH kept dropping downto 6.0 and I couldn't figure out why. One of the things I read said it could be driftwood so I removed 2 of the 4 pieces. Also poor water quality, which is what led me down the "cleaning" road. Then I started adding chemicals (PHup, baking soda).
Tested the water this morning for a quick read using API strips PH 6.0, Amon 1, Nitrite 0, Nitrate <5 Temp was 74.8. I typically keep the temp between 70-72 however in the summer it tends to get much warmer. During the day I have a fan clipped to the side to cool it down. My poor Corys looked so bad and one of my plecos was having a hard time staying on the glass
So I immediately did about a 25% wc. I also pulled the large sponge filter out. I hadn't planned on putting back in so I just rinsed it in a bucket in the sink. OH MY WORD!! It was soooooooooo dirty!! Didn't matter how many times I squeezed, it came out black!! I almost gave up but was determined! LOLOLOLOL

Going to retest with the API kit in a couple of hours and will keep y'all posted!! Thanks again

PLEASE HELP!!
Here are the results:
Amon. 5
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0?
PH 6.0
Temp 70.3
KH 71.6
GH 358

I'm at a loss. This PH is soooo frustrating! What should I do? Another wc? How much?

EDIT: Adding amon calc info.

Are you adding ammonia?
If yes, you don't add ammonia to aquariums that contain livestock. If your filter bacteria died, just let things run normally until it recovers. There are some beneficial bacteria in the substrate and on the glass, plants and other ornaments. These help to recolonise the filter.

Corydoras are fine in water with a temperature up to 86F for weeks and you don't need to cool the tank down for them. Your beneficial filter bacteria also grow faster in warm water so don't worry about the temperature unless it hits 86F.

Don't touch the pH either. Just leave it at 6.0 until the filter recovers. Corydoras actually come from water with a low pH. And the pH below 7.0 means the fish won't die from ammonia poisoning.

Do a 75% water change any day the ammonia or nitrite levels are above 0.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Nope I'm definitely not adding any ammonia. I actually try to use the least amount of chemicals as possible. I'll do another wc in the morning and just let it do it's thing like you said. Thank you.
My poor babies... I feel horrible

Coolysd said:

Nope I'm definitely not adding any ammonia. I actually try to use the least amount of chemicals as possible. I'll do another wc in the morning and just let it do it's thing like you said. Thank you.
My poor babies... I feel horrible

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Hi @Coolysd,
What are the water parameters of the water change you are using?