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Cycle Gone Haywire

mollymagic

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I am on day 18 of a fishless cycle. 216 litre tank.
I did a 50% water change around day 12 as the ammonia was 0 and nitrite almost 0. Then the nitrite shot up againto 5.00. Has been slowly coming down to day 17, and nitrate rising. Then I dropped the ammonia drops down to 3.00ppm. Tested this morning, and got this!
Ammonia 0
nitrite 3.0 (yesterday 1.2) rising
nitrate 5.0 (yesterday 6.25) falling
and the ph has dropped from 8.00 to 7.4!!!!
What's going on? totally confused
Have not added anything new in tank
Have 13 plants. one bit of bog wood.
shipwreck (aquaruim safe, bought in fish centre)
 
first off, measuring pH during a fishless cycle is not very accurate since ammonia will affect it greatly dependning on you gh and kh so don't worry about it.

the plants could have absorbed nitrates.
as for nitrites, are you sure you dosed ammonia correctly? You might have added too much????

are you using liquid tests or little sticks? sticks often don't show accuretly the qty in your water. It does tell you however if any nitrites or ammonia is present, just not accuretly how much.
 
Have you been adding ammonia daily since your ammonia dropped to 0?
 
first off, measuring pH during a fishless cycle is not very accurate since ammonia will affect it greatly dependning on you gh and kh so don't worry about it.

the plants could have absorbed nitrates.
as for nitrites, are you sure you dosed ammonia correctly? You might have added too much????

are you using liquid tests or little sticks? sticks often don't show accuretly the qty in your water. It does tell you however if any nitrites or ammonia is present, just not accuretly how much.

I use the master kits, liquid bottles, not sticks. They say wait for 5 mins, but I have noticed that if you leave the test tube water samples longer (4 hours) the results change. What ones do you go by?
I don't think I have overdosed, I try and bring it back to 5ppm each day. I put in drops I work out should bring it to 5ppm and test again, usually find it is only 3/4ppm then so add a few more drops.

Have you been adding ammonia daily since your ammonia dropped to 0?

yes, bring it to 5ppm every day. Find, after testing, I have to add more and more drops to get there though.
 
it takes time for the ammonia to disperse evenly in the water so you should wait about 30 minutes after adding it to test

also, the tyest kit says to read after 5 minutes because that's how they calibrated their result sheet (the stuff you drop in the tank water makes it chane color as it reacts with ammonia, nitrite, nitrates...) if you wait longer, you'll be given more time the chemicals to mix with your water, thus darkening the color.
 
In the method of fishless cycling I followed, once you've worked out how many drops of ammonia it took to get the readings to 5 ppm the first time, you added that amount every day, until nitrites spiked. Once the nitrites spiked you halved the amount (and added that sum every day). COuld be you're adding too much ammonia.
 

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