Running out of patience!

[turnip]

I've been trying to get my tank to cycle, I've had it over a month now and was doing fine until I had to medicate for one of my fish, this appeared to mess up my biologial filter and set me back to square one.

I've since been doing 25/50% water changes, adding filter aid etc. I'm still finding my nitrItes are too high. I dont know how to lower it. I'm also not sure about my KH levels, I got a new test kit, its one of those 5 tests in one dip stick things (which incidentally I dont aparticularly like), I think my pH is lower than it once was, probably because the KH level is low too. Is it true that to higher KH and therefore increase the buffering capacity of your water that you can add bicarbonate? And if so how much (we are talking about bicarb white powder soda stuff right?!)

Getting my water to acceptable levels is really frustrating me now, does anyone know of anything else I can do to improve it faster? I'm worried about my fish, Squishy seems off colour again and pudge has started to dart around occasionally, neither of which are good signs and tell me the water quality isn't good enough. I was patiently waiting until the tank settled so that I could add some ADF's but darent whilst the water is still not right. I really would like to speed the process along!

Help!!

 

[sinistral]

Hi turnip!

Could you remind me how big of a tank you have Squishy and Pudge in? As I recall Squishy is a lionhead goldfish. What medication was it that seemed to stall out the cycle?

Does the dipstick test you have give specific readings? Like, I'm interested to know what your ammonia, nitrites, and pH are reading.

About the baking soda, before adding that to your tank I'd get a handle on what your pH is and if something in the tank is causing a downward drift. If you are doing frequent water changes you are essentially adding back buffer to your tank if your tapwater has any sort of KH. If the cause of a drop in pH isn't addressed (whatever it may be) then adding bicarb may or may not be the right solution.

Having said that, here is a useful link on low pH

My concern is that the goldfish are very messy, it may be that Squishy by himself (plus Pudge if he's a goldfish) are producing more waste than your biological filter can handle right now. You might try adding some filter material (filter floss or a filter sponge) from an existing tank (like from your LFS, or from a kind friend), or some gravel. These contain hundreds of thousands to millions of colonies of nitrosomonas and nitrospira and would likely help jump start a cycle.

Before doing anything though I'd be interested to hear what your tank parameters are...

HTH~