No Nitrite, Is There A Cycling Problem?

[fatheadminnow]

It has almost been 4 weeks now and there is still no sign of nitrite in the tank; however, there has been plenty of ammonia...about 1.0ppm every morning before I do a 30% water change. Why is there no nitrite? I add API Stress Coat plus to the water every time I do a water change. 10 gallon tank, 12 fathead minnows, AquaClear 20 power filter, 1-3 gallon whisper filter, aerator, heater with temp hovering around 76 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

[OldMan47]

The AC may be helping out a bit but until the ammonia starts staying low on its own you won't be able to back off the water changes enough to really see any nitrites develop. At 1 ppm of ammonia you should be changing a lot more than 30% at a time. The stresscoat will not remove any of the ammonia, at best it will make it less toxic for a short time.

 

[fatheadminnow]

Should I remove the carbon insert from my aqua clear filter, and remove the whisper filter as well? The reason I have the whisper filter is because I had a smaller tank, and originally had the whisper filter. But then I bought a bigger tank and bought a bigger filter, but instead of just retiring the whisper filter i decided to have that one going as well alnog with the aqua clear.

Any help would be awesome!

Thanks in advance!

The AC may be helping out a bit but until the ammonia starts staying low on its own you won't be able to back off the water changes enough to really see any nitrites develop. At 1 ppm of ammonia you should be changing a lot more than 30% at a time. The stresscoat will not remove any of the ammonia, at best it will make it less toxic for a short time.

I just add the stress coat as a water conditioner. So keep on doing water changes until the ammonia drops to zero? Its just a little hard being in college and all and my tank being at home...my sister tries her best at keeping on top of the water changes for me...lol.

 

[OldMan47]

The whisper may actually be providing some minimal amount of ammonia processing and may even be seeding the AC if it was a mature filter to start with. I would leave it in place as it can't be doing any harm. Any test result over 0.25 ppm is one that needs immediate action in the form of a water change. I am sure you can work simple ratios so a 0.5 ppm means a 50% change just to get down to 0.25 ppm. Anything higher than 0.5 ppm means repeated 50% changes to get the water in line. On a 10 gallon tank, a 75% change would only take 2 buckets of water so why hold back? A 75% change on a 1 ppm tank should drop it to 0.25 ppm but it would take 2 50% changes to have the same effect. The carbon is not harming anything and may hold some beneficial bacteria. I would not change anything in terms of media until you get the ammonia and nitrites under control. That is the main focus at this point in a tank's life.

 

[fatheadminnow]

The whisper may actually be providing some minimal amount of ammonia processing and may even be seeding the AC if it was a mature filter to start with. I would leave it in place as it can't be doing any harm. Any test result over 0.25 ppm is one that needs immediate action in the form of a water change. I am sure you can work simple ratios so a 0.5 ppm means a 50% change just to get down to 0.25 ppm. Anything higher than 0.5 ppm means repeated 50% changes to get the water in line. On a 10 gallon tank, a 75% change would only take 2 buckets of water so why hold back? A 75% change on a 1 ppm tank should drop it to 0.25 ppm but it would take 2 50% changes to have the same effect. The carbon is not harming anything and may hold some beneficial bacteria. I would not change anything in terms of media until you get the ammonia and nitrites under control. That is the main focus at this point in a tank's life.

I know...its just that i have not seen any nitrites yet, and i have had this setup running for almost 4 weeks now. I am just a little worried that something in my water might be killing off the beneficial bacteria. I hope the stress coat is doing its job...? I also have large amounts of foam on the top of the water too...is this an effect from high levels of ammonia? Or could there be something wrong with my testing solution. I use the API master test kit and the production date on the one I have is from August 2006...is three years old too old for these solutions to work properly?

 

[OldMan47]

The test kit is nearing the end of its shelf life but should still be giving good results. The foaming bothers me. Does the Stress Coat include some kind of oily material that might be building up in the tank? Things like aloe vera can give strange results sometimes and I know there are some products that contain it. If you can characterize the foaming it would be helpful. Is it a light foaming of bubbles that burst quickly but there are just so many it forms a layer or is it more like some semi-permanent bubbles that seem to just stick around? There is no chemical substitute for doing the needed water changes. If you are adding something to reduce the number of water changes, you can get a build of chemicals in the water that might show foaming like that.

 

[waterdrop]

OM47, (quick post without reviewing thread, but wanted to comment).. I used Stress Coat initially in my fishless cycle of Oliver's tank and that cycle was very slow, I eventually switched to using Prime but I thought I remembered RDD using StressCoat and having no problem but I may be remembering that wrong.

WD

 

[fatheadminnow]

The test kit is nearing the end of its shelf life but should still be giving good results. The foaming bothers me. Does the Stress Coat include some kind of oily material that might be building up in the tank? Things like aloe vera can give strange results sometimes and I know there are some products that contain it. If you can characterize the foaming it would be helpful. Is it a light foaming of bubbles that burst quickly but there are just so many it forms a layer or is it more like some semi-permanent bubbles that seem to just stick around? There is no chemical substitute for doing the needed water changes. If you are adding something to reduce the number of water changes, you can get a build of chemicals in the water that might show foaming like that.

The foaming has been around before i bought the stress coat, and yes, the stress cost does contain aloe vera. The foam are just bubbles that have built up because they can not burst quickly enough, and when i turn the aerator off, the bubbles eventually go away. But when i turn the aerator back on, the bubbles come back again and stay at the top of the water. So you think that I dont need to add any kind of water conditioner when i do water changes?

Thanks for all the help so far!

 

[mrtash]

when i did my cycle i added tapsafe everytime i did a waterchange and still do when adding water now.

 

[OldMan47]

If the bubbles are just from the air stone producing them faster than they can break, they are not a problem at all. If they were forming some kind of a film, I would be more concerned. It sounds like where you are now is having a slow cycle develop so patience becomes a real virtue.

 

[fatheadminnow]

If the bubbles are just from the air stone producing them faster than they can break, they are not a problem at all. If they were forming some kind of a film, I would be more concerned. It sounds like where you are now is having a slow cycle develop so patience becomes a real virtue.

Okay...thanks for all the help. It is very much apprecited.