Sensesfail Tank Journal

[Aqua Tom]

Tonights ammonia 24 hrs after the new main dose time and after changing the substrate and orniments the ammonia was 0 and nitrite was slightly under 0.8 which is a slight step back as it was usually 0 nitrite 24 hrs later before the big changes! sadly i cannot check the results after 12 hrs for a few days but ill make the 24 hr period to dose the ammonia and test then.

Everything ok with this?

Come this far dont want to make any mistakes!

 

[MikeO]

Hey dude..........you STILL not cycled? thought you would have been there by now with that media!

Just saw your tank....looks nice.

I think that the fluval E series heaters are meant to be placed fully upright in the tank. Not 100% but im sure i read that when i got mine....might be worth checking.

 

[SensesFail]

Hey dude..........you STILL not cycled? thought you would have been there by now with that media!

Just saw your tank....looks nice.

I think that the fluval E series heaters are meant to be placed fully upright in the tank. Not 100% but im sure i read that when i got mine....might be worth checking.

Hi mike!

Im still battling on but it definitely made progress after the media changed all the decor and seem to have had a set back- ammonia is being processed but the nitrite was 0.8 after 12 hrs and 0 after 24 so that was getting there. Tested it 24 hrs after changing things and have 0.8 nitrite after 24 hrs! l bad times but hopefully come 2 weeks today it will be sorted! The LFS will hopefully have some cichlids in for then they are seeing if they can get the type I'm after. The synos are sorted but again waiting till they can get them in. How many cichlids/cats would you recommend me starting with at first? And how many in total?

I'll check the instructions with the heater D may b a reason why it's not functioned that well! Seems to take forever to get to temp after water changes.

Cheers D

 

[waterdrop]

 

[SensesFail]

0.8 nitrite again 24 hrs after main dose l 0 ammonia grrr lol! I'll be fish in cycling If it's not ready in 2 weeks!! Good idea? Got 14 or so days till they possibly come in. 100 day anniversary in 10 days. l of doing the add and wait.

 

[SensesFail]

1.6 nitrite today 24hrs after main dose 0 ammonia l nitrites gone up! What's happening lol everything was good until I changed things haha reckon I'll beable to get fish in 2 weeks time? Temp has dropped in the house so having the tank has cooled to 25-26c over the past day or so.

Cheers guys

 

[SensesFail]

Anotheincrease on the old nitrite to around 2-2.5 ppm and ammonia being 0

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, you sure are winning one of the martinking frustration awards. Every year or so we seem to have to have a couple of fishless cycles like this to remind us that we certainly don't know everything and there must be other major controlling factors out there that we'd love to know about and be able to test.

I sometimes draw solace when I'm trying to read some of the scientific journal output that is part of the waste water treatment plant world (yes, this is one of the few places from which we can try to draw tidbits of information, even though many of their things can't really apply as either their water chemistry situations or their equipment or their goals don't really match ours) as I find they have many of the same frustrations with the nitrifiers. Mother earth just doesn't seem to always give her magic with complete freeness!

We've had both sorts of endings to these super-frustrating cases, either they -finally- break as the cycler person "out-stubborned" them or they did indeed reach a point where their favorite stock was ready and available and they successfully switched over to watching them as if in a fish-in cycling situation.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[SensesFail]

So would you swap over to fish in cycling if the store get the fish in 2 weeks WD? Or would you be inclined to wait and battle it out? If the tanks getting towards what mine is and you change over to fish in surely it's better than starting from scratch with fish as we have some bacteria to play with? This is a far fetched question as many many factors come into play with different fish but your average cichlid for example at a size of say 2 inches or 5cm how much ammonia can one fish produce within a 12 or 24 hr period? Reason I ask is if my tanks trying to cater for 4-5ppm and the fish won't produce half that surely the tank would be fine? The reason I ask is if the stock don't produce half the the ammonia im trying to cater for (4-5ppm) surely the tank will be flying? Would it sort itself out having less to process?

If I was to change to fish in cycling with where my tank is I'll have to watch how many fish I add at first? Due to the tank not being fully ready? Is that true or would I still beable to add a fair percentage of stock?

It will be 100 days of cycling soon haha

 

[waterdrop]

"surely it's better" Oh, of course SF! Not only is it better, but you're likely to be in such a late stage of fish-in that you wouldn't ever even see traces of ammonia or nitrite, you'd just be monitoring and at the ready in case there were any surprise mini-spikes calling for you to do a water change.

You'd look at your stocking plan and if there was a good plan where you started out at only 25 or 30% stocking but then made additions at two week intervals then you'd go with that sort of ramp-up plan. But even if you needed to go with an initial 50% or so stocking I doubt you'd really see problem spikes at this late stage, despite the problems you've had. Naturally we can't guarantee anything but this feels like a reasonable expectation to me.

WD