Cycle Stalling?

[adsturgeon]

Hi,

I've had a my fish tank for about six weeks, I tested the first couple of weeks with dipsticks and it claimed my water parameters were fine (this was a second hand tank, so I presumed there was already a colony of bacteria on the filter), SO i brought more fish. 2 x Dwarf Gourmais 4x Corydas. Anyways I've brought an API masterkit after the forum advised me too. These are my following water results, I'm starting to get really impatient when ammonia hasn't changed for an entire month:

Ammonia No3 No2
2/8 0.5ppm 60ppm 0ppm ---First test with kit (Did a 80% water change)
3/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---50% water change
4/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---50% water change
5/8 0.25ppm 10ppm 0ppm ---50% water change (pH = <7.4)
6/8 and 7/8 no tests - water changes 30% each day
8/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---50% water change
9/8 No test or waterchange
10/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---50% water change
12/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---50%
13/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm -50%
14/8 0.2ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ---30%
15/8 0.25ppm 15ppm 0ppm ----30%
16/8 0.25ppm 10 ppm 0ppm ----30%
18/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm No water change
19/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ----30%
20/8 0.25ppm 7.5ppm 0ppm ----30%
21/8 0.2ppm 5ppm 0ppm No water change
22/8 0.5ppm 40ppm 0ppm 4 new fish added, along with a new external fluval filter. Test done on evening. (No water change due to not wanting to stress new arrivals further).
23/8 50% water change
24/8 0.25ppm 10ppm 0ppm ---50%
25/8 0.25 10ppm 0ppm ---About to do 50% again

As you can see ammonia hasn't declined at all in over 20+ days. I'm now getting very impatient. I haven't had a nitrite spike at all, this may have been previosuly before I had the test as the tank was set up on the 14th/7.

IF I could get any advice that would be great and if this is a common problem with the API freshwater test kits?

Thanks

 

[Katch]

explain about the filter, did it have mature cycled media inside it when you began running it in this tank.

Tell us a little more about the capacity of the tank and all its inhabitants.

 

[adsturgeon]

Its a juwel 125 litre tank. I received the tank on the same day the previous owner drained it for transport, however the media was left in the internal filter so a good portion if not all the bacteria probably died. I now have it running with the internal filter and an fluval 205 external filter.

The current fish are:

4 Fancy guppies
2 dwarf gourmais
2 chained loaches
1 albino corydas
1 peppered corydas (going to add more once the cycle is complete)
2 Blue metallic 6month old angels
1 betta
2 otos.

Theres about three cherry shrimp which came with the tank as well.

I overstocked the tank to begin with because i got my water tested at a LFS and they "said it was perfect" so I presumed the filter media bacteria was still alive.

My plan is to eventually remove the internal filter as well.

I think the GH is generally average to soft. And the temperature is about 76. I've just done a 50% water change so its a bit cooler, so thats an estimate.

Thanks!

 

[Katch]

If the filter stayed wet then I'd assume a good portion of the bacteria survived which would explain the zeros on your nitrite tests.

It is entirely possible that you are a little overstocked with a damaged A-Bacs collony so the filter isn't quite up to processing all the ammonia your fish are producing.

Someone else will surely come and confirm or correct me but as I am fairly new to this myself. But it would seem you are now in a Fish-in cycle while you try and get your filters established. I would keep watching your test results and keep up with the water changes to keep the ammonia in check.

With regard taking out the internal filter you'll need to watch your water stats closely again when you do this as you could well end up back in this situation. It will help if you can take the media out of the internal filter and fit it inside the external one.

See what WD has to say on the situation later.

 

[adsturgeon]

If the filter stayed wet then I'd assume a good portion of the bacteria survived which would explain the zeros on your nitrite tests.

It is entirely possible that you are a little overstocked with a damaged A-Bacs collony so the filter isn't quite up to processing all the ammonia your fish are producing.

Someone else will surely come and confirm or correct me but as I am fairly new to this myself. But it would seem you are now in a Fish-in cycle while you try and get your filters established. I would keep watching your test results and keep up with the water changes to keep the ammonia in check.

With regard taking out the internal filter you'll need to watch your water stats closely again when you do this as you could well end up back in this situation. It will help if you can take the media out of the internal filter and fit it inside the external one.

See what WD has to say on the situation later.

Thanks I was going to leave it running for a good portion of time, and because the internal doesn't take the same sponges i was thinkign of cleaning/scrubbing at the internal sponges next to the inlet of the internal so it would suck the good bacteria up as well. Yeah I guessed due to my tank being overstocked the ammonia level was staying at that level. And didnt help me adding the angelfish and the loaches lol. But they were too cute! Anyways just getting a little impatient! If anyone can give us some advice on when to take the internal out. As long as its progressing i don't really mind...

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there and welcome to our beginners section!

Have you tested your tap water to see if any ammonia is coming in with the water changes? Sometimes that happens.

If that is not the case then I still think we may be able to untangle what's going on. You got an established tank with a given set of stock and an internal filter. You then added a new (Fluval 205) external filter but you don't mention moving any of the mature media over to the new filter (did you do that?) Many people think that having one mature filter and one new filter on an aquarium is a way to "seed" the new filter with bacteria. Unfortunately, any transfer of the autotrophic from the old to the new is extremely slow, on the order of a year. Its not a bad thing per se, its just that the new filter can not be considered to be cycled for purposes of adding more stock.

So you may have added more stock, thinking the new filter was helping things, when in fact what you were doing was overloading the existing bacterial colonies beyond their capacity. I have a tank of similar size with a huge mature filter and way less stock than you have, so I sympathize with your situation, I can picture it. The new filter, meanwhile, is in the beginnings of a fish-in cycling process and those always take at least a month and don't show their progress to you very clearly in your daily test logs (although you still want to do them of course because you need to monitor whether you are keeping the fish safe.

The goal is to only let the two poisons (ammonia and nitrite(NO2)) peak at no more than 0.25ppm whenever you can be home to test again. The variables involved are way too numerous to settle on a simplistic water change percentage, you have to base your water change pattern on your test results. The key things to understand are that the fish will suffer less permanant gill and nerve damage the closer the ammonia and nitrite results stay to zero ppm, while the bacteria will be receiving plenty of ammonia for their slow growth even if the liquid-reagent based test results were to show zero ppm a lot of the time. So refining your gravel-cleaning-water-changing into an efficient process for yourself becomes the focus for a month or so.

Oh, and if your tap water has zero ammonia then this should show that the API ammonia test kit is doing ok at showing zero ppm. If the kit seems to show at least 0.25ppm all the time then it might be good to be suspicious. Make sure the test tube or related equipment like a syringe is not being shared with ammonia dosing or something. A good way to test your test process more carefully is to rinse the test tube with distilled water prior to testing. You can also check the web (probably too obscure for your local LFS) for a Salifert ammonia test kit. They are more accurate than API and therefor helpful in questionable situations. I really think though that you probably have a simple overstocking under-cycled situation going on however.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[adsturgeon]

Hi there and welcome to our beginners section!

Have you tested your tap water to see if any ammonia is coming in with the water changes? Sometimes that happens.

If that is not the case then I still think we may be able to untangle what's going on. You got an established tank with a given set of stock and an internal filter. You then added a new (Fluval 205) external filter but you don't mention moving any of the mature media over to the new filter (did you do that?) Many people think that having one mature filter and one new filter on an aquarium is a way to "seed" the new filter with bacteria. Unfortunately, any transfer of the autotrophic from the old to the new is extremely slow, on the order of a year. Its not a bad thing per se, its just that the new filter can not be considered to be cycled for purposes of adding more stock.

So you may have added more stock, thinking the new filter was helping things, when in fact what you were doing was overloading the existing bacterial colonies beyond their capacity. I have a tank of similar size with a huge mature filter and way less stock than you have, so I sympathize with your situation, I can picture it. The new filter, meanwhile, is in the beginnings of a fish-in cycling process and those always take at least a month and don't show their progress to you very clearly in your daily test logs (although you still want to do them of course because you need to monitor whether you are keeping the fish safe.

The goal is to only let the two poisons (ammonia and nitrite(NO2)) peak at no more than 0.25ppm whenever you can be home to test again. The variables involved are way too numerous to settle on a simplistic water change percentage, you have to base your water change pattern on your test results. The key things to understand are that the fish will suffer less permanant gill and nerve damage the closer the ammonia and nitrite results stay to zero ppm, while the bacteria will be receiving plenty of ammonia for their slow growth even if the liquid-reagent based test results were to show zero ppm a lot of the time. So refining your gravel-cleaning-water-changing into an efficient process for yourself becomes the focus for a month or so.

Oh, and if your tap water has zero ammonia then this should show that the API ammonia test kit is doing ok at showing zero ppm. If the kit seems to show at least 0.25ppm all the time then it might be good to be suspicious. Make sure the test tube or related equipment like a syringe is not being shared with ammonia dosing or something. A good way to test your test process more carefully is to rinse the test tube with distilled water prior to testing. You can also check the web (probably too obscure for your local LFS) for a Salifert ammonia test kit. They are more accurate than API and therefor helpful in questionable situations. I really think though that you probably have a simple overstocking under-cycled situation going on however.

~~waterdrop~~

Hi,

I have just placed the external in with it, I heard some advice that if u scrub it after a few weeks the old bacteria will be sucked into the new one so it can re-establish the external, would this help?

Would you consider its overstocked once the tank is established as I wanted to add a few more guppies and corys to the tank. I can confirm the tap water ammonia is actually 0.25ppm which i find is a bit odd?

Any more advice and thanks for your help =]

 

[waterdrop]

No, its quite common to have ammonia and/or nitrates in the tap water, nothing terribly wrong with it either, remember, we're literally talking parts per million here, so the amounts are so small they are hard for us to imagine to some extent.

Yes, that advice is quite good. If you simply take the sponge of the mature filter and squeeze it directly in the tank its just come from then a significant amount of bacteria will make its way in to the new filter. In fact, if you leave the water in the internal filter when you lift it out of the tank, squeeze the sponge (or swoosh the loose media) in the tank and then return the sponge to being submerged in the filter that is sitting there on the desk or whatever and then -leave it out- for a half hour or so, only the new filter will be turning over the tank water and thus it will receive the full benefit of mopping up the debris and bacteria from the mature filter.

You should also consider buying some new media for the internal filter and then removing 1/3 of the mature media, replacing it with new media and moving the mature media over to the new fiter to mingle with the new media in the new filter.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[AlanTh]

wow - this is complicated.

UGF is the way to go.

 

[adsturgeon]

UGF? is that undergravel filtration?

Thanks for your help everyone doing another test and water change looks like nitrite is 0 again and ammonia 0.25. Just waiting a couple more minutes...

 

[waterdrop]

Keep up the good work adsturgeon. WD

 

[adsturgeon]

Still at 0.25ppm Ammonia 0 Nitrite and 5-20ppm nitrates. Angels are starting to show aggression towards pretty much all the other fish GOing to observe them for a while, hopefully I won't have to get rid of them. They are such a nice pair and cost a fair bit!

 

[waterdrop]

You are indeed being impatient. You are about 20+ days in to a fish-in cycling situation and often they take more than a month. Many -fishless- cycling situations (where you can see the progress a little easier because you're not changing water) take a full 2 months and 70 days of cycling seems to be a pretty common number we see.

Another thing you could do out of curiosity if the impatience is really making you want to do something would be to order a Saliferts ammonia kit from online and compare its results with the API ammonia kit. The Saliferts is a more complicated test and gets fooled less often by other substances than the API kit does I believe.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[adsturgeon]

I know i'm being impatient just want to add some more fish

Just get a bit jealous when I see peoples cycle's completed in ten days or so lol. I've turned the heating up as well to hopefully encourage bacteria growth!

Thanks for all the help, this is actually the 49th day since i first added some fish to the tank, prior to the api kit i was using a dipstick test which was giving me false positives claiming my tank water was perfect and thus it resulted in a couple of fish dying


Hopefully it will be done by the end of September!

 

[adsturgeon]

Also after doing tests on my tap water it's still 0.25 ammonia. Is there any point in me doing so many water-changes every day if its at the same level, should I leave it to every other day?