Ideas On Why Cycling Wont Start

[LionessN3cubs]

Hello. I've been posting over in the newbie section for about a month. I've run into a brick wall on something so Im going to start this thread here as well as over there because Im desperate. Will try to be as concise as possible.

10 gallon tank set up March 22. Filled and left sit for a week.
March 28th added ammonia. Ammonia ingredients: softened water, ammonia, chelating agents
april 4th still no drop in ammonia at all. levels too high. 2x 50% changes. ammonia at 4 ppm
april 7th water very unclear (not cloudy as in bacteria bloom)...80% change as per advice. ammonia level 3 ppm
April 17th acquired mature filter squeezings and squeezed them over my filter. Also ordered Mature sponge filter online.
April 18th 11 am. sponge Filter arrives packages with air bubble in bag and plenty of the tank water it came from (including snails). Was intransit roughly 24 hours I think. Hoooked up to air pump immediately and placed into tank running in tandem with HOB filter (penguin bio mini wheel).
April 20th. Ammonia reading 4.0. 50% water change as per advice in hopes lower ammonia would process.
April 21st. Still no for sure drop in ammonia (POSSIBLE drop of less than a point but may be wishful thinking).


Backtotropical. I understand where you are coming from about me not adding the fish. Here is a last ditch effort to avoid just getting the fish and hoping the tank cycles itself magically.
Heat is set at 86
Ph is 7.6 and has always been stable
air pump running in sponge filter with plenty of surface turbulence
water hardness is also correct
dechlorinator used each time water has been changed or added to tank


Is there ANYTHING anyone can think of that I might have done wrong. Has anyone heard of it taking a month for ammonie to even drop ONCE during a cycle? Im just desperate here

 

[backtotropical]

Hi Lioness,

I honestly don't believe you are doing anything wrong.

From when you started (28th March) until 4th April, your ammonia was far too high. You said you done 2 x 50% changes which brought the ammonia level down to 4ppm. This means initial ammonia was around 16ppm. The filter wouldn't cycle with ammonia levels this high, so these days can be totally dis-counted.

So, 17 days on from there, your ammonia hasn't dropped. I will conceed that 17 days is longer than usual for the ammonia to drop, however Waterdrop waited between 19 - 21 days for ammonia to start processing.

There are many variables in fishless cycling which either aren't possible to measure, or are too expensive or too much effort to measure, or we simply don't know the effects due to the lack of scientific research on the subject. I'm not sure why your cycle is taking longer, but i'm pretty sure it will work given time and help from the members here.

I certainly wouldn't throw in the towel at 17 days. There are still a few things left to try before i let you give up . Firstly, i think you are premature in being worried, however Bio-Spira is definitely worth a try. If you get some, make sure it has been kept refrigerated (very important). It is a bacterial supplement which should help your cycle along (and its one of very few which i believe actually work).

Then, theres always another water change. If neither of these work, and you are another week down the line with no drop in ammonia, i would suggest maybe starting again (but not with fish).

Please trust me, put your patience hat on, and we'll get you cycled. I can't ever remember anyone who we (collectively as TFF membership) couldn't get cycled. Not yet anyway.

I hope this inspires you to wait a little longer before jacking it in.

Cheers

BTT

 

[LionessN3cubs]

Hi Lioness,

I honestly don't believe you are doing anything wrong.

From when you started (28th March) until 4th April, your ammonia was far too high. You said you done 2 x 50% changes which brought the ammonia level down to 4ppm. This means initial ammonia was around 16ppm. The filter wouldn't cycle with ammonia levels this high, so these days can be totally dis-counted.

So, 17 days on from there, your ammonia hasn't dropped. I will conceed that 17 days is longer than usual for the ammonia to drop, however Waterdrop waited between 19 - 21 days for ammonia to start processing.

There are many variables in fishless cycling which either aren't possible to measure, or are too expensive or too much effort to measure, or we simply don't know the effects due to the lack of scientific research on the subject. I'm not sure why your cycle is taking longer, but i'm pretty sure it will work given time and help from the members here.

I certainly wouldn't throw in the towel at 17 days. There are still a few things left to try before i let you give up . Firstly, i think you are premature in being worried, however Bio-Spira is definitely worth a try. If you get some, make sure it has been kept refrigerated (very important). It is a bacterial supplement which should help your cycle along (and its one of very few which i believe actually work).

Then, theres always another water change. If neither of these work, and you are another week down the line with no drop in ammonia, i would suggest maybe starting again (but not with fish).

Please trust me, put your patience hat on, and we'll get you cycled. I can't ever remember anyone who we (collectively as TFF membership) couldn't get cycled. Not yet anyway.

I hope this inspires you to wait a little longer before jacking it in.

Cheers

BTT

::::sigh::::: I can manage a little longer patience wise I 'spose. This just sucks yanno? I think I wouldnt feel quite so frustrated if I had at least gotten a START..something to go on yanno? Hubby gave me some hope this morning when I had him double check my color chart. He said it was slightly lighter than last night. Then I had to go and test nitrites. One of your other posts I think it was said that 1ppm of ammonie processed converts into 2.7 nitrites...I still have zero so apparently it didnt change at all

I've called every pet store in town and even those within 30 miles. NO ONE here carries bio spira. I checked locally before I ordered the mature sponge filter online because I was afraid of what would happen during shipping. There just isn't any bio spira around here to be had. The pet stores here dont even know about fishless cycling ..or at least wont admit to it even when speaking to someone like me who isn't asking them questions, instead asking for products to help. They all think Im nuts LOL.

I'll hang in for awhile yet. Like you said waterdrop took 19 to 21 days and most had never heard of it taking that long. If I wait til friday, that puts me at 20 days...I'll even wait until saturday. Family support on this is wearing VERY thin...they're trying but even hubby is getting upset that I put alot of time and money into this just for it to sit empty. I keep telling him if I dont do this it'll be even more money is loss of fish and then the trauma of pet death on our boys but if I rip this all apart and wash it all down and start over fishless again...I think I'll have a mutiny on my hands!

 

[pirate monkey]

I will also say to you just be patient!!!

I started my cycling over a week ago with mature media, and expected miracles straight away, but a week later things are just starting to happen...

Doresy said to me that although some people find the mature media gives a real kick start, it does not always work miracles lol!!

I can only imagine how frustrated you and your boys are, and you are being extremely patient, but I'd say give the mature media at least a week. I think the bacteria colony doubles every 24hrs, so even if there isn't a lot to start with, within a few days you should see the ammonia starting to drop, and the amount it drops by will increase with every day that goes by!

 

[waterdrop]

OK BTT, I have this detail/feeling to discuss re Lioness's fishless cycle:

In my case it is true that my big ammonia drop came shortly after the large water change that you recommended when I was at about day 19. But there was a reason, namely that my soft water allowed the pH to crash down to 6.0 and numerous sources say that will stall the cycle. Each water change I did brought the pH back up to 7.4-7.6, much better than 6.

But in the Lioness case there has never been an identifiable problem. AFAIK, pH has been stable, which implies that there must be enough carbonate hardness to keep it stable. The temperature has been correct all along. The ammonia level was way too high initially, which might have encouraged an incorrect colony, but the effects of that should have worn off by now I would think.

SO, I just have this feeling that too many water changes might -not- be the thing for her at the moment. In the course of looking at the dozens of fishless articles out there on the web that rdd probably used to build his TFF article, I ran across a case or two where people felt that the cloudy bacterial bloom was a good thing and that when you got it, they felt that some fraction of this excess of bacteria would eventually settle on to the filter media, given some time without disturbance. I realize this may be bogus, that all that should really be needed is the food, the ammonia, but I just wonder if more days with plenty of oxygen and no disturbance(ie. water change) might be good for her. Reading her threads one just gets the feeling that the tank is always getting fiddled with, maybe can never settle down for a series of days of stable cooking!

When my Nitrite-oxidizing-bacteria finally reached maturity, it was after a series of days of cloudy bacterial bloom and nothing being done except maintaining the ammonia-oxidizing-bacteria with 2ppm of ammonia each morning.

ok BTT, ready for you to come bak'at me...
~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i totally understand your point waterdrop, and i definatley think there's value in just letting thins be for a few days without mucking around with it. the most stable tanks i've had, the ones that runa nd run with no problems are the ones i don't tinker with. many times when we've changed tanks around it's thrown up unexpected problems.

i think the crux of it is that we test for a very small number of factors in the water, without a full lab it's impossible to test for anything else, and a lot of the tests available to fishkeepers are fairly unreliable anyway. so the best we can do is take a guess at what's going on in the tank, once in a while something that we dont test for throws a spanner in the works and everyone gets confused and can't work out why the normal rules don't apply.

if memory serves me correctly you don't live too far away from Tolak do you lioness? (apologies if not, my understand of geography of my own country is shameful, let alone another country!) He's a really knowledgeable bloke and has been keeping fish for a long time he also breeds and sells fish locally so he knows a lot of people in the local area, have a good old chat to him about your water, what's in the water locally, what problems he's aware of that have cropped up locally and stuff like that. see if anything he say's, past experiences and so on can shed light on the situation.

if not then give the tank a week, don't play with it don't do anything except top the ammonia back up to 5ppm when or if it drops down below 2/3ppm. just try and relax about it.

if there's still no movement in that time then strip the whole tank down, scrub everything including the media. if it just won't start there's a chance there's some sort of contaminant in the tank somewhere that we don't test for, clean everything in a weak bleach solution (thin household bleach no smelly ones just plain bleach 20:1 solution with water) rinse the hell out of it then start over again. Then if you've seen no movement in a week or so if you wanna try doing it with fish (although it's not something i'd advise) i'd say you could at least satisfy yourself that you've done everything possible to try and avoid it.

Try and put this into som perspective, i can appreciate how frustrating this is, however i've known people cycling with fish where it's taken upwards of 3/4 months, and remember in that time you're doing daily water changes, everytime you go to the tank you're worried cos there's a good chance the fish are gonna be ill/dead when you get there, it's a really stressful time going through it that way. Believe me, i've done it both ways, and while fishless cycling can be frustrating and require patience, it's not half as exhausting as cycling with fish both mentally and physically. It really is worth it.

the suggestions above just require another 2 weeks patience. you've got 3 kids, that must require a bucket load of patience, i'm sure you can manage another 2 weeks

 

[LionessN3cubs]

OK BTT, I have this detail/feeling to discuss re Lioness's fishless cycle:

In my case it is true that my big ammonia drop came shortly after the large water change that you recommended when I was at about day 19. But there was a reason, namely that my soft water allowed the pH to crash down to 6.0 and numerous sources say that will stall the cycle. Each water change I did brought the pH back up to 7.4-7.6, much better than 6.

But in the Lioness case there has never been an identifiable problem. AFAIK, pH has been stable, which implies that there must be enough carbonate hardness to keep it stable. The temperature has been correct all along. The ammonia level was way too high initially, which might have encouraged an incorrect colony, but the effects of that should have worn off by now I would think.

SO, I just have this feeling that too many water changes might -not- be the thing for her at the moment. In the course of looking at the dozens of fishless articles out there on the web that rdd probably used to build his TFF article, I ran across a case or two where people felt that the cloudy bacterial bloom was a good thing and that when you got it, they felt that some fraction of this excess of bacteria would eventually settle on to the filter media, given some time without disturbance. I realize this may be bogus, that all that should really be needed is the food, the ammonia, but I just wonder if more days with plenty of oxygen and no disturbance(ie. water change) might be good for her. Reading her threads one just gets the feeling that the tank is always getting fiddled with, maybe can never settle down for a series of days of stable cooking!

When my Nitrite-oxidizing-bacteria finally reached maturity, it was after a series of days of cloudy bacterial bloom and nothing being done except maintaining the ammonia-oxidizing-bacteria with 2ppm of ammonia each morning.

ok BTT, ready for you to come bak'at me...
~~waterdrop~~

Hmmm waterdrop...that gives me pause for thinking. I went back and did a search of posts just to be sure...and what I remembered is right. in the beginning of april there was a time I used bottled water for my water change...a large one (I recall using 4+ callons to refill the tank which means I did at least a 50% change. This is also when I added the heater I believe. My water got pretty cloudy (cloudy to me but NOT cloudy like pictures I've seen of bacteria bloom) after that AND I was showing slight nitrite. VERY slight nitrite ...so slight I didnt see a drop in ammonia. I did ANOTHER water change because of the cloudiness of the water on advice rfom here....maybe I shouldnt have done that and maybe something IS wrong with my tapwater. Im sure the bacteria that was on the mature sponge filter I orderes is already dead since is didnt start working (can I cry now, I cannot order another one) but I wonder if I should suck it all out and buy some bottled water and see what happens again? I know your saying I shouldnt touch anything any more..but if its my tap water (and Im betting it might be, remember me saying my tap water dries pink on surfaces?) then doing nothing wont help!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

if there is something up with your tap water (entirley possible, phone up the water company and ask them for the chemical make up of your water, they should have max and min quantities of various things which they can give you, you may even get them to come out and take a sample and test it in their lab) then you shouldn't use bottled water.

basically the chemical make up of bottled water is all wrong for tropical fish, short term it's fine, long term it can make them poorly. what you'd need to do is get reverse osmosis water and remineralise it. you can either buy RO water from a fish shop (any that sell marine's should sell it) or you can buy a unit and make your own.

 

[LionessN3cubs]

what are we talking about cost wise? I can handle buying 4-5 gallons of bottled water a week to do water changes (once Im at that point) but if the RO water is expensive....Im out of luck. What about buying a brita water pitcher and filtering my tap water before I use it?

if there is something up with your tap water (entirley possible, phone up the water company and ask them for the chemical make up of your water, they should have max and min quantities of various things which they can give you, you may even get them to come out and take a sample and test it in their lab) then you shouldn't use bottled water.

basically the chemical make up of bottled water is all wrong for tropical fish, short term it's fine, long term it can make them poorly. what you'd need to do is get reverse osmosis water and remineralise it. you can either buy RO water from a fish shop (any that sell marine's should sell it) or you can buy a unit and make your own.

Just out of curiosity Miss wiggle...what makes bottled spring water bad for the fish in the long run?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

the difficulty in answering weather a brita filter would work is because we don't know what (if anything) in your tap water is causing problems we can't tell if a brita filter would extract that. although for the cost of a brita filter i reckon it's worth a try!

perhaps someone can step in with some cost advise on RO units and water in the USA. Over here though it definatley worked out more cost effective in the long run to buy our own unit. It was around £50 ($100 approx), but obviously thats a one off cost, once you've got the unit it doesn't cost anything except an annual change of the filters which is about £10 ($20 approx). For enough RO water to do a weekly water change it's around £3/4 ($6/8). Obviously you can do the maths, over the course of 6 months to a year the cost of the RO unit will be less than buying it when you need it. It's also easier to have it on tap.

Now your getting into the science that hurts my head can't give you a very good answer on why spring water is bad, post in the scientific section though and i'm sure bignose, andywg et al will be able to answer properly. Bottled spring water is a misleading name though, it's not like someones sat there with the bottles filling it up from the spring, it goes through treatments and a mineralisation process.

but the basics of it are that the fish take in the water by osmosis continually, so the balance of minerals and so on in the water affect the balance of minerals in the fish, the fish's mineral requirements are different to those for a human being (and we're also a hell of a lot bigger than them so can take higher levels of minerals) and as such can cause problems. Like imagine if you never got any vitamin C in your diet, while short term it'd be fine, if you went on for years and years without any you'd get scurvy (like sailors in the olden days). same as how vegans have to take vit B12 supplement to keep them healthy cos it's not in any of the foods they eat. Just have to get the balance right for the species in question.

what an RO unit does is it basically filters tap water down to pure H2O (or as near as possible) add you then buy a powder which has the right balance of minerals for fish mix it in, then you're good to go with perfectly balanced water for the fish. For most people this isn't necessary as fish are relatvley adaptable, but once in a while you come across someone who'se tap water is so dodgy that they need to go through this process. Unfortunate for you but it sounds like you may be one of those people. However if you are then at least it's identified from the start and you know what to do. If you think about i, if there's something in the water that's so bad you can't even grow bacteria in it, it's sure as hell not gonna be healthy for fish to live in it long term. So while this may be a long drawn out process, you're saving yourself a lot of heart ache in the long run by identifying it before adding fish.

I'd suggest maybe getting some RO water and some mineral powder, starting over using that and then seeing if you see any movement in a couple of weeks. I'd also try a control experiment in a tupperware tub or something like that by rigging up the second filter in there and trying that with brita filtered water.

then you'll know if you need to g to all the expense of RO water or if a brita filter will fix it.

 

[pastabake]

A Britta filter is a really bad idea.

Step 1
Intensive Pre-Filtration
In a first step the water flows through a fine mesh filter. This is the pre-filtration. The mesh retains particles, which are present in the tap water.

Step 2
Ion Exchange Filtration
The ion exchange resin comes into action! It reduces the carbonate hardness, which causes limescale that affects the water quality and leads to a limescale build up in your household appliances. Also, levels of metals such as aluminium, copper and lead are significantly reduced.

Step 3
Activated Carbon Filtration
The granulated activated carbon is another step in the BRITA water filtration. It significantly reduces substances that affect smell and taste of your tap water such as chlorine, certain pesticides and organic impurities.

Step 4
Intensive Final Filtration
In the fourth and last step a special fine mesh filter retains the particle mixture.

As you can see they are basically a waste of time ... and potentially harmful because you don't want to change your water hardness ... if I remember correctly this is done by exchanging your calcium/magnessium ions and replacing them with chloride ones.

 

[LionessN3cubs]

Okay....Im almost POSITIVE my ammonia vial is lighter in color today so Im definately going to wait until friday to do anything. If it IS changing its with snail speed but by friday I'll definately know. Grrrr

 

[Miss Wiggle]

may just be a case of needing patience. if you think it's changing then definatley give it a couple of days more and see what happens.

 

[waterdrop]

Naturally, since my fishless cycle was so long (61 days total, including reasonably known problems) and Lioness's time period has been shorter, I tend to think its a patience thing.

But its true that there could be an unknown in there, maybe even the pink residue thing. Lioness, wouldn't it be a fun project if you could get involved in a side adventure of solving the mystery of the pink residue and finding out other unknown things about your local tap water? You could get the kids watching on the whole way. You could drive down to your local water authority and find the front office - if you're lucky they might not be able to resist the "facemail" of live humans being there wanting to see how water gets tested - bring a big gallon full. By most accounts the folks at my local authority here are pretty friendly and will respond by email and talk on the phone - most of the time they don't see much interest in what they do from their customers.

Anyway, all the time you are embarked on this side project, you will be giving the bacteria more days slowly multiply and maybe start lowering that dark green in the yellow direction!

There's a lot of smart people up in PA, hey, that's where I was born! I'll bet your water folks are proud of their lab and will want to show there is good water coming out of your tap!

(see, aren't I the positive fellow, lol) ~~waterdrop~~

 

[LionessN3cubs]

okay so here's a further question for you guys collectively.


from april 7th until now is 15 days with no (or maybe little) movement from the ammonia. I had the level of ammonia up to 4-5 until last friday when tolak told me to lower it (actually did that on saturday) since saturday my level has been at 2 (slightly dropping). Im wondering if I should top the level back up to 4-5 or let it be for now and see if it IS dropping for sure. If it IS dropping maybe I should do the add daily method instead of add and wait? Im not sure on this ...what do you all think? I know the add daily method takes longer (and ya'll are wondering if I am NUTS for thinking I have the patience for THAT lol) but Im asking as far as the bacteria colony. If its sluggish I dont want to kill what I MAY have by topping it back up to 4-5 in one dose KWIM?