Finshed Cycling?

[waterdrop]

Ah, that makes sense! It is a very good sign of progress actually. What's happening is that your two bacterial colonies are now beginning to process so much ammonia all the way through to the end product of nitrate(NO3) that the nitric acid fraction...

(when nitrate ions are dissolved in water the negative NO3- will readily attract any hydrogen protons it can get from the water and will form HNO3, Nitric Acid - about 7% will get itself into this state - a very strong acid even though there will be only a tiny amount of it)

...is large enough to make your pH crash! During fishless cycling, when your pH drops down in to the sixes, we refer to is as "crashing." The bacteria react to this by slowing their growth way, way down. At pH 6.2 and below it takes a very long time to detect any colony growth at all.

The fix is to perform a complete water change. You shut down your heater and filter and gravel clean the water out all the way down to the gravel. Keep your filter media from drying out though! Then refill your tank with dechlorinated, roughly temperature matched replacement tap water. In fact, it can be even more effective to refill only 1/3 or 1/2 the way, run the filter a bit and then remove it down to the gravel again before again refilling with conditioned, temp-matched water. Heavy nitrates can be difficult to get out of the gravel and filter unless you do this, but I think you'll find that if you test about 20min after all this that your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate values will be quite low and your pH will be close to your tap water pH. BE SURE to recharge again with a 5ppm ammonia dose, to prepare the bacteria to start growing again. They may take a day or two to begin to show normal, understandable numbers right after this, but they will.

People (including me sometimes) will often advise the use of baking soda to keep the pH from dropping but this is not really necessary unless things get out of hand and the pH is crashing on you repeatedly. Doing a few water changes like this near the end of the fishless cycle is good practice for beginners to work out the logistics of what it is going to be like to do weekly water changes (though they will be a smaller percentage change of course) and usually water changes are all that's needed to help keep up a decent pH through to the end.

Good luck and I'm sure plenty of the members can follow-up with advice if I don't pop back in.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[HayzH]

managed to add 5ppm last night and tested just now and ammonia has gone down to 0.5ppm but nitrites still up at 5

right...now this is confusing me.....(dont take much!) are you adding ammonia to 5ppm or 5ml of Ammonia???
and why are you adding daily?? are you not doing the add and wait method?

 

[waterdrop]

HayzH makes a good point. Fishless cyclers following the Add & Wait method (which probably means 99% of the beginner fishless cyclers here in the beginners section) should always be working out their ammonia dose by using the ammonia calculator (our web tool you can click on at the top of the forum web pages) and verifying that it looks about right when they do a follow-up liquid reagent based ammonia test, such as the API ammonia test (in that test it should look a tiny bit darker green than the 4ppm color but definately not the 8ppm color.)

The amount of the ammonia dose doesn't need to be as exacting as this makes it sound but it is helpful to feel you are getting reasonably close. The most important thing is not to be dosing way up at 8ppm for days on end as this can encourage the wrong variety of bacteria and give you a setback in the process. The actual -amount- of ammonia is rarely the same for any given tank or brand of household ammonia, so your number of milliliters will be a custom amount that you will get to know from your calculations and testing.

It is also quite common that one puts in a dose once each 24 hours during many of the weeks of fishless cycling, but technically of course one should never dose unless the ammonia has dropped to zero ppm at some point during the previous 24 hours (then, if it went to zero (or very close to it) you dose at your "add-hour", the same hour each day within the 24 hours.) A common example would be to always dose at 7pm (if ammonia dropped to zero) which would allow you to test 12 hours later at 7am (if you are at the stage of needing 12-hour tests) before going to work or school, if you happen to follow a common schedule like that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[HayzH]

HayzH makes a good point. Fishless cyclers following the Add & Wait method (which probably means 99% of the beginner fishless cyclers here in the beginners section) should always be working out their ammonia dose by using the ammonia calculator (our web tool you can click on at the top of the forum web pages) and verifying that it looks about right when they do a follow-up liquid reagent based ammonia test, such as the API ammonia test (in that test it should look a tiny bit darker green than the 4ppm color but definately not the 8ppm color.)

The amount of the ammonia dose doesn't need to be as exacting as this makes it sound but it is helpful to feel you are getting reasonably close. The most important thing is not to be dosing way up at 8ppm for days on end as this can encourage the wrong variety of bacteria and give you a setback in the process. The actual -amount- of ammonia is rarely the same for any given tank or brand of household ammonia, so your number of milliliters will be a custom amount that you will get to know from your calculations and testing.

It is also quite common that one puts in a dose once each 24 hours during many of the weeks of fishless cycling, but technically of course one should never dose unless the ammonia has dropped to zero ppm at some point during the previous 24 hours (then, if it went to zero (or very close to it) you dose at your "add-hour", the same hour each day within the 24 hours.) A common example would be to always dose at 7pm (if ammonia dropped to zero) which would allow you to test 12 hours later at 7am (if you are at the stage of needing 12-hour tests) before going to work or school, if you happen to follow a common schedule like that.

~~waterdrop~~

+1 waterdrop..
i dosed 8 days ago and have been waiting for it to drop (which it hasnt budged) if OP dosed with 5ml...its no wonder it went 8ppm or more?! i added 4ml (was calculated to add 3.75ml) and mine went to 6ppm.
They need to be more clear on ppm AND ml xx

 

[ctsv510]

I would recommend building a table like I did to add to your cycling journal. Rather than go back to the calculator each time, since your tank stays the same size and your liquid ammonia concentration stays the same, I found it helpful to build a table like this to reference after I tested my ammonia levels. Note that it was just coincidence that my tank size made the ml dose almost the same as the desired ppm dose.


Am .......... Dose
(ppm) ....... (ml)
0.50........ 0.57
1.00........ 1.14
1.50........ 1.70
2.00........ 2.27
2.50........ 2.84
3.00........ 3.41
3.50........ 3.97
4.00........ 4.54
4.50........ 5.11
5.00........ 5.68


You can build your own quickly using your parameters and punching them into the calculator.

 

[HayzH]

I would recommend building a table like I did to add to your cycling journal. Rather than go back to the calculator each time, since your tank stays the same size and your liquid ammonia concentration stays the same, I found it helpful to build a table like this to reference after I tested my ammonia levels. Note that it was just coincidence that my tank size made the ml dose almost the same as the desired ppm dose.


Am .......... Dose
(ppm) ....... (ml)
0.50........ 0.57
1.00........ 1.14
1.50........ 1.70
2.00........ 2.27
2.50........ 2.84
3.00........ 3.41
3.50........ 3.97
4.00........ 4.54
4.50........ 5.11
5.00........ 5.68


You can build your own quickly using your parameters and punching them into the calculator.

now im even more confused???
why does the amount you add change?
(you'll have to forgive me..im dim and it is late .. bad combination)

 

[ctsv510]

Sorry....the number on the left is the ppm of Ammonia that you would add to the tank depending on what you need to add on any particular day. The number on the right is the dosage in ml of the Ammonia solution that you need to use to increase your tank Am concentration by the corresponding ppm amount. As I said, my ammonia concentration and the volume of the tank just so happened to make the measurements extremely close for both.

For example, if I measured my Am concentration level at 1.5 ppm, I would want to add 3.5 ppm to bring the level back up to 5 ppm. With my table, I just look for the 3.5 ppm line, and go to the right to see the appropriate ml (volume) of Am that I need to add to the tank to get it there.

I didn't mean to confuse anyone, it just seemed appropriate to add this table to my journal so I didn't need to use the calculator each time.

Make sense?

 

[Overload]

Sorry....the number on the left is the ppm of Ammonia that you would add to the tank depending on what you need to add on any particular day. The number on the right is the dosage in ml of the Ammonia solution that you need to use to increase your tank Am concentration by the corresponding ppm amount. As I said, my ammonia concentration and the volume of the tank just so happened to make the measurements extremely close for both.

For example, if I measured my Am concentration level at 1.5 ppm, I would want to add 3.5 ppm to bring the level back up to 5 ppm. With my table, I just look for the 3.5 ppm line, and go to the right to see the appropriate ml (volume) of Am that I need to add to the tank to get it there.

I didn't mean to confuse anyone, it just seemed appropriate to add this table to my journal so I didn't need to use the calculator each time.

Make sense?

ctsv510 I think your are talking about the "add daily" method, while HayzH is doing the "add and wait" method.

Though the chart is useful for both the "add and wait" version would only need 2,3,4 & 5 ppm values

 

[ctsv510]

I guess I assumed that it was decided that HayzH was going to start the "add and wait" method rather than what he was doing. "They" say that the only real advantage to the "Add Daily" method is that by the end of the cycle you have more bacteria than if you had done the "add and wait" method, so you would be in a better position if you were planning to overstock your tank.

But, the "add daily" method takes longer to cycle, and you technically should still be able to boost your bacteria colonies to overstock your tank using the "Add and Wait" method. Once your tank is cycled, you should be able to over-feed the bacteria with ammonia until it is processing as many ppm of Am in 12 hours as you want. I could be wrong here but it's too logical for me to think otherwise.

I am too math oriented (and probably a little too OCD) to go through the "Add daily" process because you aren't controlling the cycle as much as you could. I get more satisfaction out of reading exactly how much Am has been converted and how much needs to be added to bring it back to 5 ppm, rather than just dumping the same amount of Am in the tank everyday until it's cycled.

It's all personal preference, and either way works in the end.

 

[Fraoch]

Now im just really confused! ive been trying to add 5ppm ammonia once it has dropped to 0, i was struggling with trying to fins the right volume to add so sometimes it jumped up to 8ppm on me. What is the ammonia calculator your talking about? sorry if youve already said.
But what i should do right now is do a full water change, fill half to tank(dechlorinated), leave a while then empty again then fill full(dechlorinated) then carry on with the cycle?

 

[Overload]

Now im just really confused! ive been trying to add 5ppm ammonia once it has dropped to 0, i was struggling with trying to fins the right volume to add so sometimes it jumped up to 8ppm on me. What is the ammonia calculator your talking about? sorry if youve already said.
But what i should do right now is do a full water change, fill half to tank(dechlorinated), leave a while then empty again then fill full(dechlorinated) then carry on with the cycle?

http/www.fishforums.net/aquarium-calculator.htm
the calculator is at the bottom of that page

 

[Fraoch]

Now im just really confused! ive been trying to add 5ppm ammonia once it has dropped to 0, i was struggling with trying to fins the right volume to add so sometimes it jumped up to 8ppm on me. What is the ammonia calculator your talking about? sorry if youve already said.
But what i should do right now is do a full water change, fill half to tank(dechlorinated), leave a while then empty again then fill full(dechlorinated) then carry on with the cycle?

http/www.fishforums.net/aquarium-calculator.htm
the calculator is at the bottom of that page

ooh thank you

 

[Fraoch]

sorry to annoy everyone again but i did the full water change added water let filters run emptied it and then filled it and then added 5ppm ammonia that night. But 8 days on now and the ammonia is still at o.5ppm and the pH is back down at 6 but i think our tap water is acidic but not sure how acidic? does this mean its crashed again? can i add soda to take the ph up or what should i do? thanks

 

[HayzH]

i seemed have caused a commotion ...

I think this long into the cycle you should aim to dose UP to 2/3 ppm (NOT 2/3 Ml) By using the calculator shown in the link provided. This will also give your Nitrites chance to catch up a little...this is what i did..and the Nitrites all came back down. I think you have been added Ml's instead of dosing up to ppm. thus taking the ammonia level high ...making tons of nitrites. Are you adding daily??? or add and wait method??

 

[Fraoch]

i seemed have caused a commotion ...

I think this long into the cycle you should aim to dose UP to 2/3 ppm (NOT 2/3 Ml) By using the calculator shown in the link provided. This will also give your Nitrites chance to catch up a little...this is what i did..and the Nitrites all came back down. I think you have been added Ml's instead of dosing up to ppm. thus taking the ammonia level high ...making tons of nitrites. Are you adding daily??? or add and wait method??

ive been doing the add and wait method, i used to calculator to add enough ammonia to take it up to 5ppm(15mls) 8 days ago and it still hasnt gone back to 0. So once it does come down to 0, i should be adding about 2ppm and waiting till it goes to 0 again?