Fishless Cycle - Results So Far

[stormy78]

I am starting to get frustrated now as I dont feel like I'm making any progress I need to get this cycled in the next 4 weeks or so as I go on holiday and all the work so far will be undone if no fish are present.

 

[waterdrop]

I am starting to get frustrated now as I dont feel like I'm making any progress I need to get this cycled in the next 4 weeks or so as I go on holiday and all the work so far will be undone if no fish are present.

I reviewed some of your thread and realized we got sidetracked a bit talking about how the pH seemed to measure as high as 7.6 coming out of the tap but then drops to 6.8 fairly quickly.

You'll note that BTT said in one post that pH 6.8 should be fine and I agreed, saying it might be slower but probably wouldn't be worth messing with. At the time you seemed fine with being patient. You might want to wait and see what BTT (or any other experts like RDD or others that might chime in) rather than what I'm about to tell you, but here goes:

If you are the kind of impatient where you just want to try something, you could try attempting to get the pH up higher and see if that improves the speed (of course you'll never really know if it did or whether the nitrites just finally started processing!) and my own feeling is that this doesn't hurt anything because it all goes "out with the bath water" so to speak when you change out the water prior to fish.

It would be ideal to do this after a water change, but its not really necessary(its nicer for your log records that way because you get a feel for what you can do starting at tap water stats and making a change). You can read this in some of the other current threads where people are being helped. I'll mention two ways, crushed corel in the filter or baking soda in the tank. Let's assume you try baking soda in the tank. You need pure kitchen baking soda, ingredients should say Sodium Bicarbonate. Make sure its not Baking Powder or anything else but simple baking soda. I think your has about 150 to 160 litres of water. The rate to dose is 1 teaspoon per 50 litres to raise KH about 4 degrees and maybe raise pH a little or none. You could try 4 teaspoons as a first conservative try, then you could do more later after considering it with help from here.

The main idea is to either hold that initial pH 7.6 up there or even push it a little higher. You'd need a KH test kit, have you got one? You could consider putting it in an old sock and lowering that into your open-top internal or HOB filter if you have one, or into the side of the tank. Personally I just sprinkle it in and it dissapates quickly. You'd measure your KH and pH prior to doing this of course, so you have good records of where you've been and what changes.

Anyway I'll try to check back in at some point to see what you decide,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[stormy78]

Hi Waterdrop, I'm fine with waiting but as I said, with going away on holiday I dont want the slow progress made so far undone because I can either not find someone to add the ammonia or I do and they cock it up lol. The problem I have with the tap water is that the PH varies and thats with the water being medium hard. On Miss Wiggles advice I bought a digital PH reader which is far easier to read. After calibration the PH at work (8 miles from the tank) is around a very high 8.6. At home the PH out of the tap was reading 7.05 so I can see why it slowly drops in the tank. However as I said the PH in my tap water has been as high as the late 7's with the liquid test kits going blue instantly.

I know the filter is maturing each day and I can see slight variations in colour on the test kits that do not mean that they are the next reading down yet on the results cards but tat they are heading that way. Ammonia is definatly processing within 24 hours and NitrItes are getting close. This morning showed that NitrItes dropped from 5ppm at 8pm last night to 0.25 this morning. The PH has, however, dropped down to 6.6 so I was planning a 90% water change this evening to raise the PH back to 7. After the last water change the PH stayed stable for 5 days.

I really dont want to mess with the PH artificially if I can help it but its just so infuriating that my tap PH fluctuates so much!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I really dont want to mess with the PH artificially if I can help it but its just so infuriating that my tap PH fluctuates so much!

it could well be that the tap water fluctuates cos it has a low kh, the water company will add stabilisers but these are only temporary which would be why it fluctuates.

have you tested your kh?

 

[stormy78]

Hi MW I tested my water hardness a few weeks back and the GH came in at 179ppm, or 10dkh, the KH came in at 107.4ppm, or 6dkh. I have checked with South Staffs water and they say the water hardness here is 165.8ppm or 9.3dkh.

 

[waterdrop]

KH of 6 or 9, shouldn't matter, should hold the pH pretty steady for a pretty long time, should not fluctuate a lot like KH 0-3 would.

So the issue is really that the tap water, after it settles, is just coming in at a pretty low pH. And its only a bit of an issue for fishless cycling. After you have fish it should be a good combo, the plants liking the more acid water and many good acid-loving fish to choose from and your KH keeping it pretty stable.. will be good tap water I would think.

So MW, what do you think? It seems sort of on the border line whether a recommendation of crushed corel just to possibly speed up the fishless cycle is really a responsible recommendation or not. I sort of hate to get into making things more complicated for people.

[ I -do- feel that we've had a lot of anecdotal information in many recent fishless cycling reports from people that seem to very much confirm the thing that apparently has been said for many years, that the bacteria we want will grow faster up around a pH of 8 and slow to an almost complete stop down around 6.2 pH. The Hovanec articles seemed to lend support to this also, but I'd hate to be disseminating exaggerated information.]

~~waterdrop~~

 

[stormy78]

Day 38 (Tuesday 20th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 0.25pm
NitrAte: 40
PH: 6.67

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 1.00ppm <
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 6.69

 

[stormy78]

I have retested the tap water and the PH is 7.06.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i would just stick with it as it is and not tinker with the pH and KH. it's always a bit tricky to adjust them and you can end up with it all over the place, as the cycle is still progressing (albeit slowly) I'd say just carry on as you are and stick with it.

 

[waterdrop]

sounds like a reasonable decision - his pH readings are not all that low

 

[rdd1952]

I have been away a while and missed this thread when I've been on. It sounds to me as if you have been cycled for a while. Nitrite will take a little longer to process since 1 ppm of ammonia yields about 2.7 ppm of nitrite meaning the 5 ppm of ammonia turns into about 13.5 ppm of nitrite.

As for the pH drops, I think that will sort itself out once the daily dose of ammonia is gone. Nitrate is acidic so the constant addition of nitrate through the cycling process keeps pulling the pH down. Once you do a large WC, you will be back to basically tap water again and the pH should be fine.

 

[waterdrop]

Welcome back RDD! That's interesting - we have had a number of fishless cyclers who have reached the point where ammonia is being processed down from 4ppm to 0ppm in 12 hours or less and their nitrites are close to that but not quite making it within 12 hours. A few of them have gone ahead and done the big water change and stocked with fish and then reported that everything was fine and they saw no ammonia or nitrites at all after getting the fish in.

It sounds like you agree that this is a typical end-of-fishless circumstance? If that's true, it would be reassuring as far as advice to pass along.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. we figure you were burning up the great golf courses

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I have been away a while and missed this thread when I've been on. It sounds to me as if you have been cycled for a while. Nitrite will take a little longer to process since 1 ppm of ammonia yields about 2.7 ppm of nitrite meaning the 5 ppm of ammonia turnsino about 13.5 ppm of nitrite.

???

it does produce more but surley you should wait until both ammonia and nitrite are processed down to 0 within 12 hrs.

often seems to be a few weeks at the end of a cycle where the last bit of nitrite lingers, but it does drop down eventually.

 

[rdd1952]

I think the key is that if the tank is now processing 10+ ppm of nitrite in 24 hours or less, then there is plenty of bacteria present to handle the nitrite produced by a full fish load. I'm sure that eventually the nitrite would process in 12 hours but I'm not so certain that is necessary.

The one key difference between a fishless cycle and a stocked tank is that during a fishless cycle, we are introducing the full 5 ppm of ammonia at once so the bacteria have to kick into overdrive to process it. In a stocked tank, the ammonia (probably not 5 ppm in a full day) is released gradually as it is emitted from the fish or as waste breaks down.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I think the key is that if the tank is now processing 10+ ppm of nitrite in 24 hours or less, then there is plenty of bacteria present to handle the nitrite produced by a full fish load. I'm sure that eventually the nitrite would process in 12 hours but I'm not so certain that is necessary.

The one key difference between a fishless cycle and a stocked tank is that during a fishless cycle, we are introducing the full 5 ppm of ammonia at once so the bacteria have to kick into overdrive to process it. In a stocked tank, the ammonia (probably not 5 ppm in a full day) is released gradually as it is emitted from the fish or as waste breaks down.

hmmmm makes sense, i've always just thought it's best to wait until both of them have gone.

perhaps if stormy's got too much time on his hands he could do an experiment for us, add the 5ppm of ammonia gradually over the course of the day, monitor for ammonia and nitrite hourly over 12 hrs and see what happens. would be more like a real simulation of a stocked tank that way.