My Cycling Journal

[lee158]

Hi,

It doesn't sound like anything i've seen.

I cycled my old tank with ammonia and never saw anything like that.

once your cycle starts going - you can get green agle due to high nitrates. I got kleen off ammonia from focus do it.

Lee

 

[rdd1952]

It's probably some type fungus. That is the reason I don't like using something that basically rots to produce the ammonia. I prefer bottled ammonia which is much cheaper (less than a dollar for 1/2 gallon which will cycle a half dozen tanks). I would remove the decoration and clean it up.

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

Another test result added for today. Again no Nitrite, am getting a bit worried nothing has shown up. I've done everything outlined in cycling, could it of been something in my filter that I've done wrong?


---DATE--------pH----Ammonia----Nitrite----Nitrate
================================
01/09/2007----6.6-------1.0----------0----------0
02/09/2007----6.6-------1.0----------0----------0
03/09/2007----6.6-------1.0----------0----------0
04/09/2007-----NO TEST AS OUT ON POP-------
05/09/2007----6.6-------1.0----------0----------0
06/09/2007----6.6-------1.0----------0----------0
07/09/2007----6.6-------2.0----------0----------0 (Note: Added a further 3 prawns)
08/09/2007-----NO TEST AS OUT ON POP-------
09/09/2007----6.8-------4.0----------0----------0
10/09/2007----6.8-------4.0----------0----------0
11/09/2007----7.0-------4.0----------0----------0

 

[fry_lover]

are your test kits ok? i mean any reason for them not to be, dont mean to be patronising but are you following instructions properly? are the test kits not "too old" etc, that kinda stuff.....

someone said a 100% water change then, but whats the difference with doing that and just carrying on, adding more ammonia or ammonia source? I am sure i will be educated on that, which is fair enough

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

are your test kits ok? i mean any reason for them not to be, dont mean to be patronising but are you following instructions properly? are the test kits not "too old" etc, that kinda stuff.....

I used a "5 in 1" test strip just to check last night. But it came up with the same readings as my master API test kit.

I'm sure I'm following the instructions **checks**, yup followed the instructions.
Its brand new when I bought the tank.

someone said a 100% water change then, but whats the difference with doing that and just carrying on, adding more ammonia or ammonia source? I am sure i will be educated on that, which is fair enough

Know what you mean, wonder if there was any bacteria there in the first place?!

I'm sure I setup the filter correctly

 

[lee158]

Hi SFK,

When i cycled my tank, it took over 2 weeks for nitrite to show up.

Few things i learned was that if the ammonia gets too high it will lower the ph which can make you tank stall. I put in extra ammonia to cover the weekend and it stalled my tank. a 30% water change did the trick. The reason being is a different bacteria grows under lower ph. Sorry if this is diverting from your question.

I would test dailey for ph ammonia and nitrite. there is no point testing for nitrate until you see nitrite.

Lee

 

[rdd1952]

someone said a 100% water change then, but whats the difference with doing that and just carrying on, adding more ammonia or ammonia source? I am sure i will be educated on that, which is fair enough

Sometimes a large water change can jump start things. It is the general consensus that the first bacteria get into the tank via the water. It would appear that for some reason there are no bacteria in the tank to begin processing ammonia since there is no nitrite present. I don't really know how that is possible but it appears that nothing is happening. Doing a large water change should introduce bacteria into the tank to get things going.

Another thing that you should keep an eye on is your pH. It has risen from 6.6 to 7.0. My experience is that pH usually drops with the addition of ammonia. You may want to check your decorations to make sure they aren't having any effect.

 

[rabbut]

You could prehaps consider adding some mature media to your filter to give it a kick start. Check out the pinned topic at the top of this sub-forum . As RDD says, bactiria are usualy found in tap water supplies, and are able to colonise and multiply in your filter. For some reason, this does not appear to be happening in your tank. Either a 100% water change or introducing mature media would help to boost the numbers of bactiria presant to kick-start the cycle. Is it possible that there is something on your prawns, which may be killing your filter bactiria?
HTH
rabbut

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

Arranged to get a filter squeeze from a friend tonight. Should take about 20mins to get home.

Anyone explain how to do it at my mates house and what to do when I get back home?

 

[fry_lover]

Arranged to get a filter squeeze from a friend tonight. Should take about 20mins to get home.

Anyone explain how to do it at my mates house and what to do when I get back home?

it wont do any harm, but it might not make any difference either, perhaps worth a shot though

best thing to do is get the mature filter media off your mate, keep it wet and get it into your filter ASAP

phone your mate, tell him you LOST his media and you are sorry and use it for yourself

might lose a mate, but tank gets cycled quicker

seriously, its worth a shot at the squeeze, but dont expect it to do an awful lot, Rdd1952 might be able to set me straight, in my knowledge and experience, the sponge you squeezing in the water would have to be as "mucky" as possible and you really wanna see your water turn a bit brown from the results of the squeeze. I am not saying that "brown" water contains more bacteria, but it would indicate that filter sponge hasnt been cleaned too rigourously recently

OR are you doing the "squeeze" at the dudes house then bring the results back to your house? i guess thats it.

Ask him if you can cut of a tiny bit of the sponge and put that in your filter

Doing this creates a small risk of transferring pathogens or harmful bacteria to your tank if his tank has issues, however (and Rdd1952 might be able to clarify) this risk is small i think and any there wont be any host fish in your tank anyway for parasites

ANOTHER TIP (rdd what do you think?)

despite what peeps often say about gravel containing next to no bacteria or hardly any thats makes a difference to anything (i have seen this written a few times), in the past i HAVE speeded up my expected cycle period using some gravel, now i guess other factors could have been at play, but its my belief the gravel made a difference as the cycle period was wuicker than normal and all other normal cycling varibales were as close as possible to my normal fishless cycling techniques.....let me explain.............

- i used a big net, roughly about 9 or 10" at its widest point, and also the net wasnt too "fine" and neither was the gravel, so this allowed for lots of stuff to come out of gravel WITHOUT the gravel itself going all over my tank to be cycled (which was sand substrate). The tank i was cycling was a 48x12x15 with "rotting" prawns , LOL Rdd1952 - but good point

- the gravel was from a 36x12x18 community tank, mature

- i filled the net up quite full of gravel from the mature tank and placed the net and gravel by the Fluval 4+ internal i had in there, so the water flow from the Fluval 4+ went almost straight into the Net/Gravel

- I stirred the gravel in the net and mixed it up a few times each day

- Perhaps it only made a tiny difference, but its these tiny differences that i presume can really kick start things

- I am convinced my dirty gravel had enough bacteria in it to make a positive difference to my cycle, although i cannot swear by this scientifically.

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

Which colour and type of sponges are we talking about here to get a squeeze/cut from?

I've got the Juwel setup with 2 fine blue, 1 coarse blue, 1 green, 1 black and 1 white.

 

[fry_lover]

Which colour and type of sponges are we talking about here to get a squeeze/cut from?

I've got the Juwel setup with 2 fine blue, 1 coarse blue, 1 green, 1 black and 1 white.

the squeeze will be coming from your friends sponges though?

rephrase your question perhaps, or maybe its me being silly and slow LOL

EDIT: what filter has your friend got? basically you want to get a squeeze from a "fine" spounge rather than a "coarse" one, i think i have got that the right way round, in theory the coarse ones will hold bacteria but they are also there for mechanical filtration, i think the fine ones are "supposed" to hold more bacteria and their job is mostly designed to be biological, go onto Google and have a look at Juwel Internal Filter / Sponges or some similar search, even if your friend hasnt got a Juwel, you could find out what Juwel say about THEIR sponges as the principle i think will apply to other sponges (what holds more bacteria, fine or coarse)

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

Sorry, they've got the same setup as mine.
So the blue fine ones.

Might see if I can get one of them from my friend as they should have 2 in there.

 

[rdd1952]

ANOTHER TIP (rdd what do you think?)

despite what peeps often say about gravel containing next to no bacteria or hardly any thats makes a difference to anything (i have seen this written a few times), in the past i HAVE speeded up my expected cycle period using some gravel, now i guess other factors could have been at play, but its my belief the gravel made a difference as the cycle period was wuicker than normal and all other normal cycling varibales were as close as possible to my normal fishless cycling techniques.....let me explain.............

- i used a big net, roughly about 9 or 10" at its widest point, and also the net wasnt too "fine" and neither was the gravel, so this allowed for lots of stuff to come out of gravel WITHOUT the gravel itself going all over my tank to be cycled (which was sand substrate). The tank i was cycling was a 48x12x15 with "rotting" prawns , LOL Rdd1952 - but good point

- the gravel was from a 36x12x18 community tank, mature

- i filled the net up quite full of gravel from the mature tank and placed the net and gravel by the Fluval 4+ internal i had in there, so the water flow from the Fluval 4+ went almost straight into the Net/Gravel

- I stirred the gravel in the net and mixed it up a few times each day

- Perhaps it only made a tiny difference, but its these tiny differences that i presume can really kick start things

- I am convinced my dirty gravel had enough bacteria in it to make a positive difference to my cycle, although i cannot swear by this scientifically.

Actually, I'm one of those that believes the amount of bacteria in the gravel is insignificant. For bacteria to colonize, there has to be a water flow to bring them food. There isn't any water flow in the gravel except when a UGF is being used. Even then, the flow ends up being in channels where the gravel hasn't gotten clogged. There probably is a small amount of bacteria on the top layer of gravel as the filter output probably produces some flow over the gravel (depending on the type filter you have). Adding some gravel certainly won't hurt unless the tank you take it from has disease or parasite problems but it probably won't help a lot either IMO. Kind of like using Cycle or Stress Zyme.

Sorry, they've got the same setup as mine.
So the blue fine ones.

Might see if I can get one of them from my friend as they should have 2 in there.

If you have the same set up, see if he will just swap a sponge with you. Give him your new sponge (either one is fine) and take his. The sponge will contain enough bacteria to get you jump started and the bacteria he loses won't be significant enough to cause him problems. The remaining bacteria will multiply in about a day to replenish it's numbers.

 

[SexyFishKeeper]

Got a filter squeeze. The water was brown really mucky.
So poured that into my filter and the water has cleaned up like no one's business. I've also taken the prawns out as there was nothing left of them.

So fingers crossed everyone!!!