Day 27 Of Fishless Cycling And Still No Nitrites

[aletas]

Hi waterdrop,

You're right... the Goldex ammonia doesn't foam. While we were looking at the bottle in the store I made my hubby take a whif of it just to make sure it had that very distinctive scent, ha ha.

I have a couple more questions for you:

I noticed on the Stress Coat dechlorinator bottle that it says it detoxifies heavy metals. Does this mean it's also removing any bit of iron in the water too? Would this be the reason why I should add the plant fertilizer with iron to the tank?

Also, is the PH of my tank high enough? It's at least 7.6, but probably closer to 7.8. Would a higher PH help speed up the process?

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

not sure whats available in canada fert wise, but if it was me looking for something then Flourish do an iron supplement, I'd use that. There's dosage instructions on the bottle that will say something like for every 5 gallons of water dose 1ml of fert every other day. Just work it out for your tank and follow the instructions.

But as WD said, just look what aquatic plant fertilisers are available in the LFS, if you can find one that say's it's an iron supplement then great, if not then look in the ingredients and pick out one with the highest iron content.

Very difficult to say how tangible a difference it will/won't make but it's a tip straight from Dr Hovanec, if you're not familiar with his work I suspect waterdrop can furnish you with some articles that he undoubtedly has bookmarked, big guy for fishless cycling!

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there aletas and MW,

Yes, I use Seachem Flourish myself and it has 0.32% iron in solution but I didn't mention it because I was thinking there were a couple of other fertilizers with more, but I don't know the names and don't know if it would make a difference. Probably Flourish or anything would qualify for the tiny taste of iron the bacteria would want if Tim is right.

Many, many people successfully cycle at reasonable speeds with pH in the 7's and actually aletas's pH seems higher than many of the cases we see, so doesn't strike me as really needing to get into the whole baking soda thing.

Also, as another answer to your question and if it makes you feel any better, I used stresscoat, no fertilizer and had a much lower pH and my fishless cycle came through, so no, I don't think the "heavy metal" removal statement on the stresscoat bottle is anything to worry about. (of course MW and I would laugh at the thought of holding up my cycle as an example of speed, so I hasten to say that whatever suggestions we come up with, like the fertilizer, we hope would be worth persuing as we're always trying to use the experiences of a lot of threads here to make things better.)

The thing is, I think one of the difficult things to accept is that there just definite differences in the initial "inoculant" size (the actual number of cells of the beneficial bacteria that randomly happen to get in the water initially) and because their growth is on an exponential scale this easily results in large differences in the "startup speed" of different peoples fishless cycles. We all have a natural tendency to equate it with chemistry because we are putting all the right things there and using little test tubes and all, but it is decidedly -not- chemistry.. there is no guarantee of peoples speeds being that similar to each other. We can only work on trying to be "not wrong" in crude ways.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[aletas]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long delay in replying to the latest posts, but there wasn't any change in my water stats during the last few days.

However, today when I checked for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate I actually noted a difference and just to make sure it was right I tested everything twice!
I think the cycle is finally starting!

Day 24 (again)
Ammonia 1 - 2 ppm (A little drop from the usual 2ppm)
Nitrite 0 - 0.25 ppm (First sign of nitrites since starting!)
Nitrates 5 - 10 ppm (An increase from Oct 21)
PH 7.6

I still haven't been able to get to the LFS to look for some plant fertilizer, but I added about 3ml of the Goldex ammonia to the tank on the weekend to raise the level back up to about 4ppm, I thought it was worth a try. I'm happy to see a change in readings because I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to happen!

Thanks again everyone for your help and suggestions, I appreciate it.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yay, pleased to hear that

 

[Amunet]

YAY! So nice to hear that things are finally starting to come along! So excited for you!

 

[waterdrop]

great news aletas, good work!

 

[aletas]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

Another change in readings today, 2nd time this week.

Day 26
Ammonia 0.5
Nitrite 0 - 0.25 (no change)
PH 7.6 (no change)
Temp 85º

I noticed this morning that the tank water has a strange odor all of a sudden, is this normal?

I just want to double check that I should wait now for the ammonia to drop to zero before adding more, right? I assume that it still might take awhile before I see a spike in nitrites? At least there's a trace now, so that's a start!

Thanks for your help and Happy Halloween!

 

[waterdrop]

The water surface of a fishless cycling aquarium will have a slight "earthy" odor that is not unlike good soil in a garden. This is because some of the same nitrifying processes are taking place.

Is it your habit to add ammonia in the morning or in the evening?

Its good to establish a habit of very roughly the same block of time for the add. It doesn't have to be the same time each day, you can just write the time in your log so that later you will be able to see how many hours it took to drop ammonia (or much later, nitrite) to zero.

Lets say you add ammonia at 8am in the morning. At 8pm you test and there is still a little ammonia, but very little and you get excited and test again at 10pm and find it at zero. You don't add new ammonia then, you wait until 8am the next morning to do the new add of ammonia. If you added right away when you got to zero you'd be pumping ammonia in there too often.

You'll often see various weird levels of nitrite at this stage but eventually nitrite readings will go way up and stay maxxed out every time you test. That will be the famous "nitrite spike."

One thing you can be doing right now is timing and reporting how many hours it is taking for your 5ppm of ammonia to drop completely to zero ppm. Is it taking 24 hours, 22 hours or what?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[aletas]

Thanks waterdrop for all the info.

I usually add the ammonia in the evening and I'll continue to keep a log when I add it and I'll note how long it takes for it to drop to zero. It's good to know only to add the ammonia once every 24 hrs after it starts dropping to zero, thanks.

Suddenly, this fishless cycle is becoming a lot more interesting! Have a nice evening.

 

[drobbyb]

Won't be long now!

 

[aletas]

Hi drobbyb, sure hope you're right! After the cycle's complete, I think I'll need some help stocking my tank!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yay, glad it all seems to be moving on now.

 

[aletas]

Hi all,

Thanks everyone for your previous help, but the nitrites still have me puzzled.

Here's a little update on my tank during the last few days:

Nov 2 - Day 28
ammonia 0 (First drop to zero, but took 9 days to drop since adding ammonia on Oct 24)
nitrite 0 - 0.25 (no change since Oct 29)
nitrate 10 - 20 (an increase since Oct 29)
PH 7.6 - 7.8
Temp: 85º

I added more ammonia on Nov 2 to bring the level back up to about 4 ppm.
The ammonia continued to drop a little each day, the nitrates increased a bit too, while the nitrites remained the same at 0 - 0.25 ppm... until today.

Today, Nov 7 - Day 33
ammonia 0 (5 days since adding ammonia on Nov 2)
nitrite 0
nitrate 40
PH 7.6 - 7.8
Temp: still constant at 85º
(Added more ammonia again today after testing.)

I'm wondering what happened to that small trace of nitrites suddenly?
waterdrop: you mentioned something about weird nitrite levels, would this explain the drop to zero?

I went to the LFS a couple of days ago to have them test my water, but I actually didn't bother to have them test it because they said they only use the strips and I've read that they're unreliable. Instead I bought another liquid API nitrite test kit, but I get the exact same results as the other one. I often test all water parameters twice a day.

I've read rdd1952's excellent article about fishless cycling quite a few times, but for whatever reason it seems that my fishless cycle doesn't follow the pattern he describes.
Is it possible to cycle the tank without seeing any spike in nitrites?

These nitrites (or lack of) are driving me crazy.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[waterdrop]

ok aletas,

I've reviewed the whole thread again (even though the board has that error that makes it really slow this am!) and I don't think there is anything wrong with your cycle that I see, other than that its appearing to be one of the slower cycles (don't forget, we all tend to describe the rosier "3 week" cycles, when, to my eye at least, there appear to be plenty of "3 month" cycles when you watch the realities of mistakes and slownesses we just can't explain!)

I think you are falling prey to a very typical thing of thinking of your results as more like chemistry (instead of biology) and thinking of each reading as being somewhat of a "static" representation of that substance by itself. I'll try to explain what I mean. When you log a nitrite reading you have to remember that its a "snapshot" in time, one little point somewhere on a curve that could have been dramatically shooting up and down if you were measuring it every hour or half-hour maybe. You are periodically putting in a lot of ammonia. Ammonia is being processed by the A-Bacs and each 1ppm of ammonia is turned into 2.7ppm of nitrite, so each 1ppm ammonia drop you see means that 2.7 nitrite -had- to get produced, but then maybe quite a bit of it actually -did- get processed by N-bacs into nitrate, but now its gone and your snapshot just didn't see it. Another way to look at it is that when you see a nitrite "snapshot", remember that A-Bacs are dumping nitrite in and N-Bacs are sucking nitrite out and neither is linear (they are living organisms and don't do things like a machine, they are like you, sometimes raiding the kitchen when you are hungry, right?)

Anyway, above is just my way of saying: don't worry, keep a steady hand and just plug on making your observations be as accurate and unemotional as possible and eventually results should get around to rewarding you, if our past experience with dozens of other fishless cycler reporters is any indication.

Now, about your reports: They are pretty good. I verified that your "Day 28", "Day 33" numbers were accurate, looking back through the thread. On your "Day" line, you should always add "fishless cycle on X litre/ X gallon tank" so observers can see right away what is under discussion. You are reporting the right data (nh3,no2,no3,pH,temp) but you are not really making it completely clear exactly when Xppm of ammonia was added and exactly how many hours therefor it was from then when the data were taken. So in other words its always nice if there are two other lines:
"ammonia was added to Xppm at Xpm on Xdate" and
"results for 12 hours after ammonia added" or "results for 24 hours after ammonia added" (that sort of line)

ok, good luck having the process keep moving
~~waterdrop~~