Another Post About Cycling With Plants

[mancin]

What dechlor are you using.

 
When I first filled the tank, I used the bottle that came with the tank (Tetra AquaSafe) to dechlorinate the water. I will be using Seachem Prime going forward, but I haven't changed nor added any new water since I started cycling.
 
Here is my log so far:
 

 

[mancin]

Forgive me. I am misremembering. I DID have to dose Seachem Prime the same day I started cycling. The sand I had originally put in there had limestone in it, so I had removed it and added new sand. Since the initial dechlor was only large enough for the first fill, I did have to dechlorinate with Prime after draining and re-filling the tank.
 
This makes more sense now!

 

[mancin]

Nitrites down to 0.5 PPM. Yahoo!! Guessing yesterday's reading must have been closer to 2 than 5 then. I have a hard time reading it when it's over 2 PPM.
 
Dosed 5 ml of ammonia. Hopefully it won't be too much longer now.

 

[Gruntle]

From experience, don't pull the trigger just yet, I found it took an extra couple of days longer than I wanted before the nitrites were fully 0 within 24 hours.
 
A few more days yet before you're certain and your fish will be happier.

The good news is it's easy to see when your nitrites are zero, the test remains blue and not purple, and you don't have to worry about exactly what colour it is.

 

[mancin]

From experience, don't pull the trigger just yet, I found it took an extra couple of days longer than I wanted before the nitrites were fully 0 within 24 hours.
 
A few more days yet before you're certain and your fish will be happier.

The good news is it's easy to see when your nitrites are zero, the test remains blue and not purple, and you don't have to worry about exactly what colour it is.

 
Absolutely! Not planning on stocking fish until I have 0,0 for at least a few days to be sure. I'm not expecting nitrites to be 0 when I check in the AM... but hopefully by the end of the weekend and then fish late next week if all goes well.

 

[mancin]

This morning ammonia was at 0.5 and nitrite is somewhere between 2 and 5 (I'm actually about 5 hours early for testing, but have a lot to do today).
 
This may be a silly question, but I'm going to ask anyway. When the tank is fully cycled and I'm ready for fish, do I need to still do a large water change? My plants are using up all of the nitrate so my reading has been 0 the past couple of days. I think the only purpose for the large water change at the end was to bring nitrates down to a reasonable level, correct?

 

[Gruntle]

If you're using the liquid tests, you really need to shake the living daylights out of your second bottle of nitrate tester. It has particles in it and they settle to the bottom of the bottle very quickly, so unless your arm is ready to fall off when you've shaken it for the recommended 30 seconds (IIRC) it's probably not shaken enough. I've had different readings using the same test kit on consecutive days, if I don't test for a week I don't take the first reading seriously. Not trying to step on any toes, but the nitrate test is the most unreliable in the test kit.
 
Don't get me wrong, there is a chance if you have a heavily planted tank that the plants are using all of the nitrate, but if you've been cycling to the recipe there's a big chance you have lots of nitrates no matter how many plants you have.
 
A water change never hurts, and when you don't have any fish, it's a good idea just in case.

 

[mancin]

If you're using the liquid tests, you really need to shake the living daylights out of your second bottle of nitrate tester. It has particles in it and they settle to the bottom of the bottle very quickly, so unless your arm is ready to fall off when you've shaken it for the recommended 30 seconds (IIRC) it's probably not shaken enough. I've had different readings using the same test kit on consecutive days, if I don't test for a week I don't take the first reading seriously. Not trying to step on any toes, but the nitrate test is the most unreliable in the test kit.
 
Don't get me wrong, there is a chance if you have a heavily planted tank that the plants are using all of the nitrate, but if you've been cycling to the recipe there's a big chance you have lots of nitrates no matter how many plants you have.
 
A water change never hurts, and when you don't have any fish, it's a good idea just in case.

 
Gotcha! Thanks for the response.
 
The cycle is alllllllllllllmost done. Nitrites are dropping to 0 in ~36 hours. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!