Oppurtunity For A Little Experiment Has Arisen

[minxfishy]

Hence why I say check the ph, if its dropped, the bacteria stall in their reproduction. If you do a 50% water change, redose back to 4ppm, you may see it start up again.

 

[markandhisfish]

slight problem ... no dechlorinator and lfs shut . i take it that even if the ph has crashed and stalled reproduction of the bacteria , that the existing bacteria would still live?

altho i rekon i could get away with a small change without dechlorinator as it would be greatly diluted in the tank?

 

[Truck]

A 30% with no dechlor shouldn't hurt too much.

 

[minxfishy]

yep they will be fine, just wont reproduce. Ive had it happen so many times in a fishless cycle, as soon as a large w/c is done, the cycle gets going again. It might not have, Im just thinking that may have been whats caused the stall.

 

[markandhisfish]

A 30% with no dechlor shouldn't hurt too much.

i will do a small change now then oif say 20% it may just creep the ph back up enough to kickstart things again , and wouldnt be enough to kill the bacteria already there completely

 

[Truck]

Or you could just chuck 2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda in for every 10 gallons.

 

[markandhisfish]

have done a small change which has dropped ammonia concentration to around 1ppm , im now going to re-dose to 3ppm and see what happens .

 

[minxfishy]

Good idea, dose to 3ppm, once its handling that, up it to 4ppm until it can handle 5ppm in 24 hours.

 

[markandhisfish]

right have dosed as close to 3ppm as i can get ( from colour chart the results looked closest to the colour for 1ppm) i then used the calculator to give the the ammount of ammonia needed for 2ppm and added it to the tank mixed into a jug of water then gave it a good stir. i will let things circulate around for a few mins and get a reading, then monitor over the coming 24 hours .

 

[markandhisfish]

slight overdose on the ammonia! going from the colour chart id say i had nearer 4ppm now .

 

[markandhisfish]

well i seem to have had a serious increase in bacteria levels . where as it was taking almost 48 hours to process 4ppm ammonia . i dosed up to 4ppm yesterday at around 5pm , got home from work just now ( 11 am) and tested ammonia was at zero so im now processing 4ppm roughly twice as quick.

so now i will have dosed to 4ppm at 11 am and i will test at 11pm to see what the levels are .

 

[OldMan47]

Once a day dosing is plenty for the ammonia processing build you want for a new tank. How is the nitrite processing coming along?

 

[markandhisfish]

nitrites seem to be a lot slower for some reason . i dosed to 5ppm ammomnia yesterday , this morning ammonia is zero and nitrites are a around 1 to 2 ppm.

should i dose to 5ppm ammonia again or should i wait until the nirite is processed?

 

[minxfishy]

NitrItes always process slower, the N-bacs dont multiply at the rate of A-bacs.

Keep dosing to 5ppm once every 24 hours or the A-bacs will die back, the NitrIte will catch up in a few days.

 

[markandhisfish]

okies cheers , i figured that would be the case