Strange Anomaly

[neilp4]

Hi everyone

I'm on day 33 of my fishless cycle, and apart from a slight hiccup between days 14 to 20 where I'd stopped monitoring Ph and it dropped to 6 thereby stalling the process, my cycle has been pretty predictable and to plan. At that point (day 20) I did a full water change, my tap Ph is 7.0 and I added a little Bicarb to raise to 7.4.

Each evening at 8.00pm I add ammonia to raise the reading to 4ppm after testing, and for 10 days the reading has dropped to zero after 24 hours. For the past 4 days I've also measured at 8.00am and the reading was always 0.25ppm. For the past 6 days the Nitrites have been dropping to zero after 24 hours, and the last 4 days the 8.00am measurement has seen the nitrites drop from 1ppm to zero.

This morning at 8.00am my ammonia was 1ppm, I've tested again at 2.00pm (18 hours after adding ammonia to 4ppm) and it's still 1ppm. Nitrites were zero at 8.00am and they still are.

I've listed results below from day 21, the Ph has been a constant 7.4 since my day 20 re-start, Temperature is a constant 29C at the 8pm measure and 28C at the 8am measure, it has been all the way through. Nitrates have been constant 80ppm for several days now.

Note that the tank is 110 Litres and if you take into account substrate then 1ml Ammonia is equal to all intents and purposes to 1ppm

Day Time Ammonia Nitrite Notes
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21 20.00 5 1 No action taken
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22 20.00 1 1 3ml Ammonia added
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23 20.00 0 2 3.5ml Ammonia added
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24 20.00 0 2 3.5ml Ammonia added
------------------------------------------------
25 20.00 0 4 3.5ml Ammonia Added
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26 20.00 0 0.5 2ml Ammonia added
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27 20.00 0 0 2ml Ammonia Added
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28 20.00 0 0 3.5ml Ammonia added
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29 08.00 0.25 1
20.00 0 0 4ml Ammonia added
------------------------------------------------
30 08.00 0.25 1
20.00 0 0 4ml Ammonia added
------------------------------------------------
31 08.00 0.25 1
20.00 0 0 4ml Ammonia added
------------------------------------------------
32 08.00 0.25 0.5
20.00 0 0 4ml Ammonia added
------------------------------------------------
33 08.00 1 0
14.00 1 0
------------------------------------------------

Day 33 (Today) seems to be a reverse of what I expect, the water seems to have a greasy film with a few bubbles although I've been careful with not having soap anywhere near. I haven't added any water etc. Does anyone have any ideas, or is this expected.

Thanks

Neil

Oops edit, Please ignore this thread, I've repeated it and improved it (I think) on another thresd. What a balls up

 

[waterdrop]

Its ok, this sounds kind of familiar. Your nitrate(NO3) are getting a bit high now and given the other things going on I'd say you're due for a "3rd phase kickstart."

Its good practice for your habits after you get fish! Use your gravel siphon to clean gravel and remove the current tank water right down to the gravel (heater and filter will have to be turned off for this one!) This is after you've sponged down all your inner tank walls of course which is a good habit as the first step of a water change to stop algae from ever getting a start on your glass. Take a large plastic cup of your old tank water from the catchbucket and use it to roughly temperature match the new replacement tap water, using your hand. Be sure to condition the return water (using Prime or another good conditioner that removes chlorine/chloramine.. use it at about 1.5x the dose they tell you.) Then, after the water is back in and the filter and heater running again, add enough ammonia to bring your concentration back up to 4-5ppm and re-dose your baking soda (this time I'd add more baking soda as the ideal pH for bacteria is 8.0 to 8.4 and you'd really like to push it up closer to that. It takes a while to mix and know what pH it has really pushed it up to. A tablespoon per 50L is a kind of starting point I often mention to help get in the right range. Don't forget, during the fishless cycle we are creating our "bacterial growing soup" that will be tossed out before we get fish, so we can do various things to the water that we wouldn't do with fish. It will tank a day or two for the feedback of your fishless cycling tests to get back into sync from this jolt, but its almost always a good thing once you get through the day or so.

~~waterdrop~~