Cycle Update

[Miss Wiggle]

how are your nitrite levels now?

Sounds like you're now in the second phase of cycling the nitrite spike phase.

Excess levels of nitrite can inhibit growth of the NBacs, so while you need nitrite there you do need to control the levels to some extent. Each 1ppm of ammonia that is processed produces around 2.7ppm of nitrite, so if you're sending through 5ppm of ammonia every day then you're producing 13.5ppm of nitrite which is a hell of a lot!

So what I suggest in this second phase is that you firstly do a water change or two to bring the nitrite down to around 2/3ppm, then you just start putting in 3ppm of ammonia every 24hrs which reduces the amount of nitrite building up. You can do as many water changes as you need to in this phase to control the nitrite.

As you mentioned reducing the ammonia will mean the ABacs dies back a little bit, however by the time the nitrite is dropping a bit more the ABacs colony will be nice and strong and you can ease back up to 5ppm of ammonia, it'll only take a day or two for the ABacs to grow back so don't worry about it.

So keep adding ammonia and monitoring for now, when you find that the nitrite is gone within 24hrs or so then you can ease back up to 5ppm of ammonia over a couple of days.

Then just keep monitoring and topping up ammonia and when you get to the point that ammonia and nitrite are both down to 0 in 12 hrs then the cycle is done. It's a good idea to keep going for another week because this builds up a better cushion of stability, then do a 90% water change and add your fish.

 

[Gruffle]

In that case, my nitrite will be through the roof, my other half added 5ppm this morning lol, in addition to the 5ppm i did last night, when she thought i hadn't done it (well, technically, she asked if i had done, i wasn't paying attention and said "no")

Massive water change it is then

Will post test results tonight, add some more ammonia in the morning, and test again tomorrow night

 

[Miss Wiggle]

good stuff

 

[Gruffle]

As if to spite me (after saying that my ammonia was being reduced to 0 after 12 hours), here are test results for the last 24 hours...

8pm wednesday night - added 5ppm ammonia

7am yesterday...did ammonia test, was at 0, added 5ppm ammonia (communication breakdown )
8pm last night - ammonia 0.5ppm nitrite off the scale, nitrate also off the scale

7am this morning - ammonia still at 0.25 to 0.5ppm (cant tell)

Should I wait till the morning, when all the ammonia should be done, then add 3ppm ammonia and do the water change as mentioned a couple of posts earlier to bring the nitrite down?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, your plan sounds good. In the second phase the results swing back and forth pretty wildly sometimes and your steady additions will still be just keeping the process fed properly, even though the stats you get as feedback will vary. Hopefully your water changes are perhaps bringing your pH back up higher than that 6.8 you mentioned a while back? (As long as the pH is above 6.2, the cycle will keep going, but its slower down in the 6.x range, faster up in the 8.x range.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Gruffle]

that might explain why its slowed down a lot then, since i started the cycle, my ph has dropped from 6.8 to 6, i read somewhere that my driftwood and the tannins that it releases are the likely cause of that, can't remember where though

at least the water change will bring my ph back up to the level of the tap water and get things moving again a bit!