Can't Cycle

[waterdrop]

I am not reading the nitrates wrong, 0 is bright yellow, 5 is orange. BIG difference.

There is no ammonia in the tap water.

Is it possible that the ammonia is actually breaking down into small amounts of nitrites which the plants are taking up, thus the results are showing 0.

The above confuses me. The API freshwater ammonia test shows green if you have ammonia and drops to bright yellow at zero ppm (or at it's threshhold, which is not really zero of course.) Orange is not part of the ammonia test, only the nitrate(NO3) test.

Perhaps you have the salt water test?

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Have forgotten the salt water colors, so have no idea..

 

[Whitey_144]

for the nitrates are you shaking the 2nd bottle and the test tube after, apparently this helps an accurate reading...maybe shake for longer?

 

[bumper]

If your fish are healthy and you can manage the water changes, I wouldn`t worry

With fish in cycling you dont necessarily see large amounts of ammonia and nitrite, especially with a small bioload and your water changing regime

im having the same problem,no ammonia or nitrite readings, all but 2 of my fish have died, like yourself im a newbie,and got the sponge from a mates filter and put it in mine still no reading,i was expecting to see some ammonia but nothing

 

[Gazanimal]

I am not reading the nitrates wrong, 0 is bright yellow, 5 is orange. BIG difference.

There is no ammonia in the tap water.

Is it possible that the ammonia is actually breaking down into small amounts of nitrites which the plants are taking up, thus the results are showing 0.

The above confuses me. The API freshwater ammonia test shows green if you have ammonia and drops to bright yellow at zero ppm (or at it's threshhold, which is not really zero of course.) Orange is not part of the ammonia test, only the nitrate(NO3) test.

Perhaps you have the salt water test?

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Have forgotten the salt water colors, so have no idea..

He said the Nitrate reading is yellow to orange WD, not the ammonia one.

 

[waterdrop]

If there are no disease symptoms, fish dying is commonly due to ammonia or nitrite poisoning, so a focus on whether there is something wrong in the entire testing process is still a good place for the members to focus.

In the past, there have been posts and threads that explain how to check bottle expirations for the different brands of tests. Then, as we've had some mention of, there is the question of whether the correct processes have been followed. Likewise, non-expired and high quality conditioner should be used to be sure the fish are not exposed to excessive chorine or chloramines. Temps should be checked. I don't know, I'm probably just not asking the right questions.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Whitey_144]

I'm not sure why you are still having ammonia at a constant 0.25 if there is no ammonia in your tap water. Only thing i can think of is altought the tank is cycled/nearly cycled, the plants and other organic mass is breaking down at just a slightly faster rate (as the plants are bigger than at the beginning), but i 'd expect the bacteria ro catch up with the bioload.

have you tried thoroughy cleaning the gravel when you do a water change? maybe this will help get the tank in shape and finish off the final part of the cycle.

 

[Fish4Andy]

Ammonia: 0.25
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 0

These are my water variables are have been for several weeks. I have done weekly gravel cleaning with a 10-15% water change every other day. I have 9 plants and 2 moss balls so I expect they will take some of the ammonia/nitrites/nitrates out of the water. A friend had a similar problem where the nitrites only started to appear when the ammonia reached 1. Will my bacteria build up just from 0.25?

Do we know what plants use first? Is it Nitrites?

 

[anon02]

Your filter will develope fine from 0.25ppm ammonia. One point is that when cycling from small amounts of ammonia a proportionately small colony of bacteria will grow, so you will need to be careful not to add too much livestock at one time or you risk a mini cycle

 

[Fish4Andy]

A friend has a fully cycled tank. If I got his filter cartridge and just floated in my tank, would this help spread the bacteria? Alternatively, if I gave him some BioMax and asked him to stick it in the gravel for a week or two, then transfered it to my filter, Would this work?

 

[waterdrop]

No, those ideas wouldn't work. If your friend had enough biomedia to allow a donation to you then that is what would help. The way mature media donations work is that the donor can't give more than 1/3 of their biomedia (that way, their tank won't experience a spike in ammonia or nitrite.) You buy them a set of matching new media (for instance if the friend had a fluval sponge, you buy a new replacement fluval sponge.) Then together at his house, you would use scissors to cut the old sponge and the new sponge at the same place (it works to hold them together.) He re-inserts 2/3 old sponge and 1/3 new sponge back into his filter. You take your 1/3 mature media submerged in tank water in a plastic bag and go to your new tank/filter and then sometimes you have to be creative fitting it into your filter if you have a different filter type. The best thing to do is put it just prior in the water path to the biomedia in your filter and of course to cut down of some of your current media to provide space (if it's a sponge you don't want it to get squished.)

Taking mature media from someone else's filter and putting it in your filter is by far the most powerful way of speeding up a cycle. It doesn't -always- work but it's pretty rare for it not to.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Fish4Andy]

The HOB filters only have two cartridges, so surely when he replaces one I could just use the whole thing rather than go cutting up bits of filter?? Your method sounds too complicated. Plus, with only two cartridges in his filter, hes going to have a hard time replacing 1/3

 

[waterdrop]

I'm just repeating what has been recommended on TFF for many years. If he has two identical cartridges of media then I would think that removing one would take away 50% of his bacteria and put him in danger of no longer being cycled. The 1/3 thing is to safeguard against that. Yes it is messy, but fishkeeping sometimes is!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Fish4Andy]

I understand what you are saying but why do they make HOB filters with only two cartridges if you can't remove 50% in one go?

Anyway... you know the bio media such as BioMax/Matrix/etc.., can you add additional media into the tank itself?