Fishless Cycling Trouble! Any Advice Appreciated1

[Welshweeks]

No probs mate all advice appreciated

 

[Squid]

I have had trouble with the PH dropping frequently throughout the cycle which I put down to the Mopani wood I had in there which I also removed yesterday. Up until now I've added a little bicarb soda to raise PH back to 7.6ppm which is what my tap water is.

 
Personally I would put part of the extended cycle down to the wood lowering the PH.  I had my tank cycling with the wood in place whilst performing the fishless cycle and whenever the PH went a little low this used to stall the cycle for some reason.  My gut feel would be that now this is removed things may go a little more straight forward for you.. 
 
Cheers,
Squid

 

[Welshweeks]

Popped home on my lunch break and did a quick nitrate test and looks to be 160+ppm so i'll do another large water change later to see if this is also causing the apparent stall in the cycle.

 

[Welshweeks]

Water change done, nitrates now approx 20-40ppm.
 
Dosed ammonia now it's the waiting game again until the morning!!

 

[Mamashack]

Popped home on my lunch break and did a quick nitrate test and looks to be 160+ppm so i'll do another large water change later to see if this is also causing the apparent stall in the cycle.

HAHA! Is there such thing as a "quick" nitrAte test? lol
Hope the water change has a positive effect. If I could just get that last 0.25ppm to process in 12 hrs I'd have it cracked!
Maybe I should be dosing to less than 2ppm if I'm only going to be having a male betta in the tank. Does anyone know how much ammonia they produce? Have tried a google search and on here but really found anything.

 

[Welshweeks]

Just checked this morning and not looking good.
 
Ammonia is still @ 2.0ppm (dosed @18.00 yesterday) and it was @ 2.0ppm then.
 
Nitrite - 0ppm (I assume because the ammonia is not getting converted).
 
PH - 7.6ppm.
 
Looks like the A bacs have died off and I wonder the the N bacs will have too?
 
Getting really peeved with it now and at the moment thinking of giving up on the 40L  

 
It's been cycling for 42 days with mature media! I can't figure out where I'm going wrong

 .
 
The nitrates were obviously high but would they have killed off the good bacteria? Over the cycling time I've done 6 water changes mainly due to the dropping PH.
 
When I swapped the filter over a couple of days ago they were out of the water for no longer than 10 mins so i wouldn't have thought that would be the issue? The only other thing I did was to add some more mature sponge from my other 180L filter.

 

[Welshweeks]

Here's a quick video of the tank showing the surface movement which I think is fine?
 
http/youtu.be/Xph8-ML4VsI

 

[Mamashack]

I suppose if the A-bacs have stopped working then there's no nitrItes for the N-bacs to feed on.
I have just done what I've told everyone not to do - dosed with Aqua Safe to see if I can boost the A-bacs into getting rid of that final 0.25ppm!
AS far as I can see the ripple at the surface on your video seems to be sufficient - it doesn't need to be a raging torrent.
What temp are you running the tank?

 

[Welshweeks]

It's at 28C,
 
I'm passing a LFS later so even contemplating buying some filter start to add to see if that will help things out!!
 
I always use aquasafe when doing water changes on my tanks.

 

[Mamashack]

I've been using API stress coat to dechlorinate, but had some aquasafe handy as back-up. I've dosed the Kleenoff again after 12 hrs - would normally have waited til tonight, but I'm keen to get things moving! lol
Will retest after further 12 hrs and see what difference it's made. I've also removed the mature gravel so I guess that might have some impact too - time will tell. It needs to be removed at some point so it might as well be now.

 

[Welshweeks]

Do you rate api stress coat over the tetra aqua safe? I've always used tetra and found it ok.

 

[Mamashack]

I used to use Waterlife Haloex which is formaldehyde basically, but I switched to stress coat cos it can be safely overdosed (or so I understand)
Other than this situation I haven't used aquasafe before so it will be interesting to see if it has any positive effect.

 

[Welshweeks]

Just bunged some api quick start in the tank in desperation! I have another internal filter in my 180ltr tank but it's full of ceramics and no sponge. Maybe put that in and add some fine filter wool to it and put the filter out of the 40ltr into the 180ltr, a swap

Desperation!

 

[the_lock_man]

Is it just mature sponges that you put in? The ceramic is there specifically because there are loads of tiny nooks and crannies for the bacteria to grow on. Although it's unlikely, it might be that if you only put sponges in there, you didn't actually put any A-bacs in.
 
I had a similar thing when I tried to instantly cycle my 34l for a single Fighter that I didn't put enough A-bacs in, and had to fish-in cycle for a few days whilst they caught up. I never saw a reading for nitrite, so I must have had enough of them.

 

[Welshweeks]

Hi lock man have a look at the video and see what you think. The top layer under the sponge is crushed coral to buffer the ph and the lower ones are ceramics. Everything in there is mature. It's just so odd that the cycle has just stopped working.