Hungrydoug's Fishless Cycle

[OldMan47]

Welcome Robbo.
As you have said, when the ammonia and nitrites can consistently process to zero in 12 hours after an addition of ammonia, the cycle is ready and you start thinking about fish.

Contrary to the impression given by Fishyfeet, bacteria do not live only on waste, instead they use the ammonia or nitrites to supply their growth needs. The chemicals each affect the fish in different ways, they do not just burn the fish and damage internal organs. The main effect of nitrites is to deprive the fish of oxygen which can result in nerve damage, not organ damage. Ammonia's first and most obvious effect is to burn the gills of the fish.

You dose the ammonia daily unless you still have some in the water from the day before. When ammonia starts to be processed by the bacteria, the nitrite processors have something to use to increase their numbers. The ammonia stage is often done in 3 weeks or a bit less but the whole process usually takes longer. Once the ammonia processing is going well, you will be unable to measure the nitrites for days or even weeks because it will be too high to measure. When it come back down it will do it very quickly. From that point to completion can easily take another week or two. When we are convinced that the cycle is complete, we do a massive water change, as much water as you can get without destroying the tank decor, and that reduces the nitrates that have built up to a reasonable level for the fish. For details on doing a fishless cycle, I carry a link in my signature area.

 

[robbo1987]

ahh well that does clear things up , thanks.

well i have just cleaned out my tank again and started from scratch....(i realised the gravel was absolutley filthy so thought best to start again...) i now have my filter running, just about to start the heater set to 26, i have treated with aquasafe. ive also put a small plant in the tank...and im now just going to see how things go, there is already a small trace of ammonia in the water from the tap water, and i have bought some tetra safestart but im unsure whether using this is a good or bad idea yet. and my tank is only 20 liters (5gl)

sorry if im hijacking the thread btw!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with OM47, nice post. What do you intend to do robbo, will you be getting a good test kit and some simple ammonia? Finding the right ammonia can be a bit of an adventure and is often entertaining to the members, so let us know where you go looking and whether you find some!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[robbo1987]

Yes, agree with OM47, nice post. What do you intend to do robbo, will you be getting a good test kit and some simple ammonia? Finding the right ammonia can be a bit of an adventure and is often entertaining to the members, so let us know where you go looking and whether you find some!

~~waterdrop~~

ive just ordererd an api master test kit on ebay so need to wait for that to arrive.. i havent yet added any ammonia but i have added some fish food... and i am planning on adding some safe start tommorow, will keep adding a bit of food daily and see how things go. in the meantime tho i do have a ammonia liquid kit which is still some use to be keeping a track of that.

 

[waterdrop]

Right, good that you've order a good kit but what I'm saying is that with fishfood the ammonia concentration will swing back and forth in pretty large amounts and at unpredictable times and in many cases we've watched here our beginners have become quite frustrated with it. So the search for the right type of household ammonia (it has to not have dyes, fragrances, surfactants or soaps and should not foam when shaken but is fairly readily found if you put your mind to it) is a worthwhile activity I feel.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Hungrydoug]

Well, cycle is progressing and the ammonia is taking less and less time to be processed, I'm pretty sure I'm in the 'second phase' with the nitrite spike. Only thing is that every reading I take seems to indicate between 2 and 5ppm (API test kit) the colour is darker than 2 but lighter than 5.

However, from reading the fishless cycle article, as soon as the five drops reach the bottom of the tube they turn a really deep purple colour but after a shake and five minutes they lighten considerably. Could it be that the nitrites are high enough to render the test inaccurate and I'll just need to keep an eye on the results coming down?

 

[dudleyd]

However, from reading the fishless cycle article, as soon as the five drops reach the bottom of the tube they turn a really deep purple colour but after a shake and five minutes they lighten considerably. Could it be that the nitrites are high enough to render the test inaccurate and I'll just need to keep an eye on the results coming down?

My Nirtite test is doing the same, anyone know why this is? Had it turning brown (i assume nitrites were sky high) before i did a 90% WC two weeks ago, then went deep purple and stayed purple, now going deep purple and lightening to light blue after 5 mins. Is this how it should work?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, all this is normal for both you guys. When the API freshwater nitrite kit blue drops hit the test tube water they do tell you something: If they instantly turn anything other than deep bright blue then you should be suspicious of very high (off the chart) nitrite. Usually they turn deep bright purple but sometimes the nitrite is so high that they go beyond purple and look sort of weird brown or greenish or some other dark thing. Usually when the turn to this other weird dark thing then the test might end up as pale green or something. Usually if they turned bright dark purple the test might end up some sort of purple. In all these cases the test is just out of range because nitrite is higher than 5. This all just means you're in the nitrite spike.

When you have nitrite above zero but at 5ppm or below the drops may look blue (or perhaps purple) but the test water will begin turning some shade of purple during the 5 minutes. When you have zero ppm the drops will usually look blue and then, after shaken, will look pale blue all through the 5 min. (somebody correct me if any of this is wrong, its been a while since I had some of these type results)

In all cases I encourage beginners to use good technique: give the tube at least one rinse in the test water first. Fill the tube accurately, hold the bottles vertically for the drip and of course use a timer for the various timings. And only accept the color match you see at the end of the proper time (except as mentioned above for the nitrite spike behavior.)

HD, you look to be solidly in the nitrite spike phase.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Hungrydoug]

Thanks Waterdrop. Good to know things are progressing!

 

[Hungrydoug]

Well that's day 50! Still in the nitrite phase, drops are turning purple the second they hit the bottom of the tube. I can see how this could get frustrating!

Been busy here and there so not been updating but still testing

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, your second phase seems to be going awfully slowly, making me wonder if everything is right. Your pH and temp seem quite good though, so no problems there... What's the filter type again? Maybe the members can come up with some good questions.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Hungrydoug]

It's a Fluval U2. The ammonia is taking a bit longer to clear to 0ppm that it was about a month ago. Personally I'm surprised that the ammonia isn't being processed quicker and quicker. Another test to do now I'll update shortly.

The heating broke last week for a day so the tank temperature dropped to around 25oC but I can;t see that doing too much harm.

 

[waterdrop]

Actually its my observation that ammonia processing starts out of the gates and gets quite fast and regular early on, stays that way through a lot of the nitrite spike and then often begins to falter, either slowing a bit or having some periods of not even seeming to process but then clearing. But then at the very end it seems to get past clearing at 12 hours and never comes back.

How is your filter flow? Have you noticed any slowing? I know this would be a hard thing to observe, especially if you didn't particularly get a feel for it at the start when it was full flow. I'm not really expecting anything of this, just curious.

Looking at your log, two things seem slightly odd. The nitrate(NO3) seemed to go above 5 once but otherwise this is the reading you always get. Also, the ammonia pattern seems a little different from most we get. Instead of reaching a point where it clears daily, it was in a pattern of taking days before reaching zero ppm. Nothing particularly wrong with this, just a different pattern than I usually see.

I'm wondering if a "kickstart" water changing session might be in order here. It seems possible that the nitrite and nitrate are actually extremely high in this tank but the testing is somehow not showing it (this happens.) If we were to plan a large gravel clean water change (right down to the gravel or so,) that should clear out some of these nitrogen compounds, which can have a slowing effect on bacterial growth when they get very high. Nitrate in particular is very difficult to be sure about as the test is unpredictable and it can be confused when nitrite is high.

During this perhaps capture some of the outgoing tank water (the last bucket I guess) and then take apart the U2 and just be sure all the media components are put together in the right places within the filter. Be very gentle with the media, using the tank water to at least periodically keep it wet. Perhaps you might find an excess of debris (seems unlikely though) in some area of the filter.

On your refill, use 1.5x or 2x dosing of your dechlor conditioner and use rough temp matching to help get your temp right on back up toward 29C/84F. Recharge your baking soda and your ammonia and get those levels right. The readings after this will be a little "washed out" and haywire probably but hopefully we may stir something up and make things better. Its your decision though, the usual technical reasons we would call for this are not really showing, so its just a hunch and I'd certainly hope it wouldn't set anything back, although if it did that would probably reveal that something else was somehow wrong.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Hungrydoug]

Actually its my observation that ammonia processing starts out of the gates and gets quite fast and regular early on, stays that way through a lot of the nitrite spike and then often begins to falter, either slowing a bit or having some periods of not even seeming to process but then clearing. But then at the very end it seems to get past clearing at 12 hours and never comes back.

<snip excellent post>

~~waterdrop~~

Wow, excellnt advice, thanks wd!

Filter flow doesn't seem to be reduced from when I started, using the venturi on top of the filter to get plenty oxygen in the water.

Basic readings for the nitrate are between 5 and 10 on the chart each time, so I leave it as 5 for convenience. The nitrite test drops turn deep purple the second they hit the bottom of the tube but the five minute result has been falling (compared to the colour chart) over the last two weeks from a final reading of around 4 to 0.25 today although I'm unsure of the accuracy of these results.

Once I get my car back from the garage I'll get a siphon and another bucket and try a water change. It surely can;t slow things down any further!

 

[waterdrop]

If you are starting to see something different on the 5min result of the NO2 test then that could easily mean you are close to the end of the nitrite spike phase... Good Luck!

~~waterdrop~~