Cycling My Tank :0

[OldMan47]

If I read it right you have tap water with a pH in the low 7s and have a small amount of nitrate in it. That still leaves us with the basic questions that WD is trying to get at. The water hardness and the buffering potential, KH, will mean something to some of us in how to best use your water. The general hardness, GH, will mean something to most fish keepers about what your best choices for fish would be. Some fish like harder water while others like softer water. The near neutral pH is good news in many ways because most fish can adapt easily to water in the near neutral range. If your buffering potential is good enough to hold that pH stable, you could be fairly safe with most any fish that would fit in with your general hardness range.

 

[waterdrop]

Ah, excellent summary, one to save for the scrapbook OM.. So I guess the next question is whether it will be worth the while of our cococouple to obtain a KH/GH test kit? I guess it could go either way, depending on your curiosity coco!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

On average, a pH like that is seen in water that is somewhat soft and has a low buffering potential, but who knows. We get anomalous water readings every day that make it harder to give good advice without some serious thought about the relationships involved in moving things around. If Coco has information from neighbors using the same aquifer about her water hardness that might be all that we need to know. On the other hand, few of her neighbors are likely to have an interest in the buffering capacity of their water unless they are also fish keepers. If I remember right, my combination GH / KH kit from API cost about $5 plus shipping on E-Bay and was well worth the cost involved. I also got myself a TDS meter for about $20 that makes mixing RO with tap water a walk in the park. It reads out in ppm of TDS and gives me a feel for how much minerals exist in my water. I use the TDS to determine what I am working with and where I want to go with my tank mixes.

 

[coco*butter]

Day 23
48 hour check
Amonnia= 25.pm
N02= - 0.ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Will be getting kit soon and will see if any neighboor could help. Thanks guys!

 

[coco*butter]

Day 23
60 hour check
Amonnia= 0.pm
N02= - 0.ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40-ppm {Nitrate}
PH= 60

Added 8.0 Ammonia Then added 5ml more 1:30

 

[coco*butter]

Ok I bought the GH & KH test kit and here are the results as of Day 23 at 7:00pm. I think this look bad

IN TANK
General Hardness GH= 1
Carbonate Hardeness KH= 4 ​

TAP *LOOK AT SIGNATURE

 

[waterdrop]

Well, while we were busy finding out about and making progress on the house-softener and RO water, we all seem to have overlooked the pH dropping to 6!!

The cycle won't have been doing anything once the pH dropped below 6.2, so we're going to have to do something about that!

But we might as well try to look at all of it.. Which type of water originally (or most recently, as I just want to understand what water is in the tank) filled the tank? I'm looking at that big difference in both hardness measurements and trying to understand where that came from. The GH/KH are pretty high as measured from the city water but then are quite low in the tank water. Was our tap water straight from the city/tap or was it water that had been treated by the softener or RO units or both or some mixture?

I'm picturing that we might want to do a 90% water change with the replacement water coming from the outside hose (so we don't get the softener or RO) and then recharge it with 3 tablespoons of baking soda and 5ppm of ammonia. But it would make it more complete if we first fully understood how we got the change that we did between the tap water and the tank water GH/KH, in case that helps us with what to expect overall from this change we plan to make.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you'll are having a great day as the weekend near for Father Day.
Alright, as for the tank, I fill it with the tap water from outside. I dont know if you remeber I wrote that my tank need water because it eas evporating and i said that if it will affect my water chemistry. Well the day, I top the tank with filter water, not with R/O, just filtered. It was almost 5 gallons of it. I didnt think 5 gallon will change the hold out come of my tank chemistry. I was think yesterday that will end up doing a water change of almost all the water and i see that you recommended that. Please me know if I so go ahead with your advice. Thank you

 

[waterdrop]

OK then, I'll just label it a mystery how the hardness numbers went down with GH going down more than KH.

Yes, I can't see anything wrong with going ahead with exactly what I said up above. (90% water change with conditioner and then 3 tablespoons or baking soda (not baking powder!) and then recharge to 4-5ppm of ammonia.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 25
Did waterchang 90% 1:00pm added 3tbsp baking soda and 8ml of ammonia 1:30pm tested 3:00pm
Amonnia= 4.0.pm My test kit does have 5.ppm it jump to 8.0.ppm it an API but older yellow box
N02= 0ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40 {Nitrate}
PH= 74
GH=9
KH=20

 

[coco*butter]

Day 26
24 hour checked
Amonnia= 1.0pm
N02= 0.50 ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40 {Nitrate}
PH= 76
GH=7
KH=19

 

[waterdrop]

Good morning Coco & hubby! I've just reviewed the whole fishless cycling thread again. This is one of the most complicated fishless cycles I've ever been involved in! (That's because we had the softener and RO to talk about and the Amrid in the media.. those sorts of complications!) But I want you to know I think its great that you are hanging in there and learning about fishless cycling to add to your knowledge of fishkeeping. A lot of people who had already kept fish for 15 years would have called this silly and given up!

At this point, as near as I can tell, I think we have got things in the right place for the fishless cycle to move forward. We resolved our most recent problem of the pH having dropped to 6 and now it is staying up in the high 7s.

We removed the Amrid a full 2 weeks ago and ever since then we should have been allowing our full 4 or 5ppm of fresh ammonia to be feeding the baby bacterial colonies in the filter. Technically we would have to say our fishless cycle is only at the 2-week point because of the Amrid problem but it is my hope that the Amrid did not get all of the ammonia and that we had bacteria coming along during those earlier stages and so in truth we are farther along than a typical 2 week point.

Our "ammonia eater bacteria" seem to be doing pretty good as we can put in 4ppm of ammonia and they eat it down in pretty good time. The tricky part is knowing what's going on with our "nitrite(NO2) eater bacteria" because we don't quite know how far along their colony growth is. I'm not quite able to figure out whether our nitrite(NO2) measurements are telling us we are -before- the "nitrite spike" stage or after that stage. But that doesn't matter as to what we do, we just keep a steady hand measuring and adding ammonia at our 24-hour point if ammonia got to zero anytime in the previous 24 hours. The nitrites(NO2) will sort themselves out and show us eventually. They will either go up or down. It just takes them days and days to show us that in a clear enough way that we understand it.

I have 2 questions:
1) I forget.. did you ever replace the empty spot in the filter where the Amrid was? With what?

2) I forget.. did you still have fish that you moved to some other tank and if so how are they doing??

~~waterdrop~~

 

[coco*butter]

Day 27
33 hour checked father Day was out and came back way to late
Amonnia= 0pm
N02= 0.25 ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40 {Nitrate}
PH= 76
GH=6
KH=18

Added 8ml of Ammonia at 1:00 am

Dear WaterDrop concerning your questions
1. I added bio ball from Fuval, it in my signature below, also and I think I wrote about that too.
2. The fish I did have I gave them away to a family memeber.
Ya me and hubby have alot of pacients and I have been in the hobby for so long, I keep and even breeded Discus too for 3 years. I love those fish We are willing to try a different approch in fish keeping, so that why we are still here.

 

[waterdrop]

I got some wild cupcakes for Father's Day with blue, purple and green icing (purple carrots with green tops!)

 

[coco*butter]

Day 28
24 hour checked
Amonnia= 0pm
N02= 5.0 ppm {Nitrite}
N03= 40 {Nitrate}
PH= 76
GH=6
KH=18

Added 8ml of Ammonia at 1:30 am

Waterdrop please dont talk about food , am pregnant lol