Cycling Tank - Ammonia Not Down To 0 After H2O Change

[Ashetto24]

Hi all - sorry if I am beating a dead horse here but I still have some questions on my cycling tank. For those of you who are not familiar with my situation I currently have a 20 gallon tank that has been set up for 10 days with 6 Serpae Tetra and a Java moss plants. I tested my water on Saturday and noticed that I was around .50ppm...perhaps a bit higher. I did about a 40% water change that day and tested again. The ammonia went down to .25ppm but nothing lower. After a few more tests and water changes, I did a bit over a 50% change today and it is still reading at .25ppm. I checked my tap water and that has no ammonia so I know this is an issue with the tank water specifically.

Would it be best if I tested in the morning and completed a 75% or more water change? I think perhaps I need to do at least 75% this time as the 50% is not getting my ammonia down to 0 at least for a little while.

With that being said...would putting more plants in there help absorb some of the ammonia?

Thanks!

 

[soccermatt]

I am not to sure about your test results but i can say that when i was fishless cycling my tank, i did a pointless 40% water change. Before the water change Nitrite was 5.0 and after there was no change. I would say do another water change in a couple of hours.

Adding plants would defiantly help.

Good Luck

 

[drobbyb]

Sometimes the ammonia (or nitrite) gets stuck in a sort of "pocket" in the water. This could be from poor flow or decaying organics in the gravel, and once stirred up, the result is free ammonia in the water column. The best thing to do is vacuum the gravel while you are performing a 75% waterchange, and test after 1 hour. If the results are still showing too much ammonia, you are fine to do another 75% waterchange. As long as you temperature match the water and give the fish a chance to adapt to the waterchange before you perform another, you should be fine.

 

[waterdrop]

Completely agree with Robby. You're percentages are too wimpy and all water changes need to be accompanied with deep gravel cleaning (whether there are fish in a tank or not!) to help stir up the heavier nitrogen compounds and get a better clean-out.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[New tropical gal]

Hi all - sorry if I am beating a dead horse here but I still have some questions on my cycling tank. For those of you who are not familiar with my situation I currently have a 20 gallon tank that has been set up for 10 days with 6 Serpae Tetra and a Java moss plants. I tested my water on Saturday and noticed that I was around .50ppm...perhaps a bit higher. I did about a 40% water change that day and tested again. The ammonia went down to .25ppm but nothing lower. After a few more tests and water changes, I did a bit over a 50% change today and it is still reading at .25ppm. I checked my tap water and that has no ammonia so I know this is an issue with the tank water specifically.

Would it be best if I tested in the morning and completed a 75% or more water change? I think perhaps I need to do at least 75% this time as the 50% is not getting my ammonia down to 0 at least for a little while.

With that being said...would putting more plants in there help absorb some of the ammonia?

Thanks!

Hi there


I'm having exactly the same issue. For the last 5 days I have conducted water changes daily to rid the water of ammonia. Each day I have changed no less than 50% (typically 75%). Tonight I went the extra mile and drained 90%.

Its certainly hard work to daily drain a 100litre tank.

I had some wood and rocks in my tank - I've removed both wondering whether they were exacerbating the issue.

I just hope that when I test my ammonia tomorrow that it will be at a healthy level.

I also have plants in my tank - and - apparently plant debris decays at the bottom of the tank and can cause ammonia (groan!). So it's clearly not all just about the fish waste.

Do you have an air pump in your tank? I've read that oxygenating the water as much as possible speeds up the cycling process.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, this is why you see so many of us trying so hard to help beginners avoid unplanned fish-in cycles whenever possible, it can be terribly hard work, sometimes unsustainable. You are exactly right, there are several sources of ammonia in a tank running with fish and plants in. Any kind of organic debris, typically yellowing or further decaying plant material and of course fish waste are major sources. A typical double-whammy that happens to beginners is that they are advised by the LFS to get fish too soon and then of top of that their new tank has no nutrients for plants and those begin to die and add to the ammonia production. Supposedly the largest source of ammonia though comes off the gills of fish as they respire. The ammonia comes off in addition to CO2. I've talked to a couple of scientists about this and I still have found it a bit unclear about the percentages of it that are typically in the ammonia state versus the ammonium state.

Its always good for beginners to run an ammonia test on their tap water too as some water systems can have surprisingly high ammonia content. We've had a few fish-in cycle cases that were made very difficult by high ammonia in the tap water source.

But I didn't mean to get off-topic from the basic thing of how it can just be quite large water changes that are needed. The good news is that often it seems that more are needed initially than later, except in cases where the tank is just way too overstocked for a fish-in cycle.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Ashetto24]

I definitely wish I came across this forum before I received my fish tank. I have learned so much more than I ever dreamed! If I ever do get another tank I will definitely do a fishless cycle.

I did about an 80-85% water change (made sure to stir up the gravel) and tested about 40 minutes later and it showed 0ppm (well it looked more yellow than the .25ppm coloring). Sad to say that was the highlight of my weekend/week haha. I will test when I wake up tomorrow for work and hopefully it will stay down. Keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, sad to say sometimes its the hightlight of my weekend too, I just like puttering around with the tank.. although this particular weekend we had another couple over to dinner and the other wife commented that my water was the clearest and my tank the cleanest she'd ever seen, which felt like a nice complement. Speaking of aquanerd thrills, the highlight of last night was when I discovered the box from a laboratory on the front step containing hundreds of disposable pipettes I can use to squirt liquid carbon in my tank