Fish In Cycling....stalled?

[Ashetto24]

Hi all - I was wondering if anyone could lead me to find a graph of the nitrogen cycle. I know that it takes weeks to cycle a tank but I have had my tank up and running for 15 days and still no sign of nitrite. Not sure if I am doing too much or not enough of something to find this cycle stalled.

A little background on my tank for those who are not familiar:

20 gallon w/ 6 Serpae tetra. Decent amount of Java moss in the tank.

I started testing the ammonia levels after a week of having the fish in there. After testing 2x daily I have never let my ammonia levels exceed .50ppm. Normally they are .25ppm or under....and lately I have been able to accomplish getting the levels down to 0ppm for about 12 hours or so. I have accomplished this through daily water changes between 75-80%...also with cleaning the gravel. I feed the fish once a day and I feed them right before I do a water change so I can siphon any additional food if there is any.

My question is...when should I be expecting any presence of nitrite in the tank? Not sure if it is too soon to look for nitrite in the tank. My tank temperature is about 77 F and I keep the lights on until about 10pm at night (I am beginning to think that is too much)

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Truck]

15 days is nothing at the moment, I had to wait 23 days, Hang in there.

 

[kevin82]

firstly, you should aim at keeping your lights on for only 8-12 hours

if your ammonia reads 0 at times, there is nothing to promote bacteria growth in your filter. Drop you water changes to around 50% and try to keep the ammonia around 0.5 Mg/L. This is about as far as you want to push the fish and will give the bacteria something to feed on

 

[rebrn]

As truck mentioned 15 days or more is not unusual, the key is patience. It sounds like you are doing everyting right, you want to keep your ammonia at 0.25 or less (which you are doing), and you have already cut feeding down to once a day, which is correct. As for the lighing, it should be fine, average is 8 hours a day for fish/plants, so if you are doing more than that you can cut them off earlier if you like. I don't think lite plays that much of a role with the bacteria. As for some sort of graph to show you the nitrogen cycle you can probably find one on line, but to be honest it won't help you much. There are so many variable when cycling a tank that one person's cycle graph will be drasticly different from anothers. Unforunately, those bacteria follow thier own time line. I was cycling 3 tanks simutaniously one took 101 days, another took 69 days and the last one was 40 days. So you can see, even 3 tanks in the same house where you would expect all variables to be the same vary dramatically in the time it takes to cycle your tank.

Just be patient and continue doing what you are doing. Good Luck.

 

[roadmaster]

firstly, you should aim at keeping your lights on for only 8-12 hours

if your ammonia reads 0 at times, there is nothing to promote bacteria growth in your filter. Drop you water changes to around 50% and try to keep the ammonia around 0.5 Mg/L. This is about as far as you want to push the fish and will give the bacteria something to feed on

So long as fish are in the tank and are being fed, ammonia is being produced for bacteria to feed on.
Fish produce ammonia constantly.

 

[arobinson1984]

firstly, you should aim at keeping your lights on for only 8-12 hours

if your ammonia reads 0 at times, there is nothing to promote bacteria growth in your filter. Drop you water changes to around 50% and try to keep the ammonia around 0.5 Mg/L. This is about as far as you want to push the fish and will give the bacteria something to feed on

DON'T keep your ammonia around 0.5Mg/L, this is a surefire way to cause harm to your fish.

The cycle only requires trace amounts of ammonia in order to progress, amounts so small that they arent even picked up on most home test kits so doing water changes to take the levels to 0 is fine

Ammonia is ALWAYS present in a tank containing fish even when fully cycled, but because an established biofilter is constantly working to transform ammonia its present in undetectable levels unless you used a lab grade test on the water.

Andy

 

[kevin82]

I agree with all of the comments above, maybe I should have worded it differently

My point was to run with slightly higher ammonia (0.25-0.5Mg/L) for a very short term to kick things off. 0.5Mg/L is less that what most people would have after coming back from holiday for over a week in a 'stocked' tank, but as mentioned by others I would think of going above this. Serpae Tetra's are also pretty hardy so they should be fine.

 

[AdamM]

I agree with all of the comments above, maybe I should have worded it differently

My point was to run with slightly higher ammonia (0.25-0.5Mg/L) for a very short term to kick things off. 0.5Mg/L is less that what most people would have after coming back from holiday for over a week in a 'stocked' tank, but as mentioned by others I would think of going above this. Serpae Tetra's are also pretty hardy so they should be fine.

hardly, i go away for up to a month at a time, and my tanks are always 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and low nitrate due to planting. (i get someone to feed them obviously)

 

[drobbyb]

My point was to run with slightly higher ammonia (0.25-0.5Mg/L) for a very short term to kick things off. 0.5Mg/L is less that what most people would have after coming back from holiday for over a week in a 'stocked' tank

If you come back to ammonia in your tank, then you have problems and your tank is not fully cycled. The bacteria will feed on the ammonia as long as it it present, and it always is in trace amounts if you have fish, keeping it at trace levels.

Do you happen to know what your pH is OP?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, 15 days might be half way into a fish-in cycle, at best. pH is a good question Robby, I suspect its going to be almost identical to the tap water pH since so much is being changed, but it would still be good for us to know.

The other issue we've noticed with fish-in cycles is that sometimes when you have a bigger bioload and are having to change a lot of water to keep things below 0.25ppm, it will be surprisingly difficult to actually notice the nitrite spike (if indeed it can even be called that in a fish-in.) Most of the time you can indeed see that its happening but it just gets washed out sometimes.

Because of that its important to realize that the signal that you are soon to be finished is when you can go two days without seeing any traces of ammonia or nitrite(NO2) AND you haven't changed any water! That signifies the start of your qualification week, where you of course just want to see that the filter is doing it all and you are staying at double-zeros with no water changes.

It sounds like you're doing a good job. Just report the pH and keep up the good work. Those feisty ole serpaes don't know it but they owe you big.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Ashetto24]

Thanks everyone for the great advice! I have not done a water change since mid afternoon on Saturday. I did about a 75% change then. I skipped feeding the fish on Sunday and then resumed feeding once a day on Monday. Interestingly my ammonia has only just crept up to .25ppm (it is Tuesday night as a write this). Nitrite is still showing 0%.

Unfortunately I do not have a pH kit...but I plan on buying one tomorrow. All I have right now is the ammonia and nitrite API kit for each. I had the nitrate tested at a lfs and I waited to view the results...and that was zero as well. Looks like it's a waiting game for my stubborn bacteria!

Hopefully when the tank is cycled I would like to add taller plants towards the back of my tank. The Serpae really enjoy all the hiding spots I have built for them I actually added pictures on the picture thread last night.

 

[Ashetto24]

So I went out and bought a pH test kit from API and tested my pH. It is around 7.6...depending on the light it may look a tad lighter/darker.

I'm really confused because my ammonia levels are still steady at .25ppm (as they have been since I did a water change on Saturday)....and no signs of Nitrites at all.

Has anyone had experience with this?

I can see it taking a while for my nitrites to register...but I would think my ammonia would keep creeping up..especially since I have not done a water change until there were enough bacteria to break my ammonia to nitrite.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!