So. I can't say I have exactly been making good fishkeeping decisions in the past week, which I'm not particularly proud of.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it here or on another thread, but I started having issues with nitrites in the tank, without any inhabitants. I think, in retrospect, it is due to two factors: 1) I discovered my tap water has chloramine (for some reason I was under the impression that it was just treated with chlorine, because I like to think that our city would have our best interests in mind - maybe they do, and the only way they can keep the terrible water from making us sick is to add chloramine, who knows). In the few weeks that I had left my tank do "do its thing", it appears to have started its cycle due to the slight ammonia introduced from the tap water, which then resulted in ammonia being converted to nitrites. 2) A lot of the plants that I had ordered online took a hit while I was gone, and there was a lot of dead stuff in the tank for a while. I think it was also enough to be an ammonia source, resulting in MORE nitrites being built up.
When I first tested the water around the time that I last posted (over 10 days ago now), my nitrites were off the charts, so my solution was to do a 50% water change and introduce water wisteria. I also bought some Java fern that I attached to a rock:
For the record, the internet makes this "attach plants to rock with fishing line" thing sound easy. Whatever, I threw it in the tank figuring we will see what happens. worst case it'll all die, best case I can cut away the fishing line in a month or so and I will have a halfway decent attachment of java fern
As of 1/8, the tank looked like this:
you can see the rock towards the front left corner behind the crypt, and the water sprite is in front of the heater. two pieces of the water sprite came off, so I planted them in the back left between the bacopa bunches (there are two vals back there, not that you would know it.... I am interested to see if they survive or if they're just not meant to be lol.)
As of today, the tank looks like this:
New plant additions are hornwort and two amazon swords (this tank is being used as a "nursery" for them before they go into the 125g). The hornwort is not doing so hot for some reason. For a supposedly "unkillable" plant it sure seems to not be happy! what's also interesting is that one of them floats, while the other sinks, go figure.
You can also see some new animal additions, which brings me to my "not the best decisions in terms of fishkeeping" point.
So, nitrites. Nitrites were high, so I got the water sprite, and figured, "well, I'm sure the water sprite will mop them right up, 20gal is a lot of space for a snail so I'll get a mystery snail too since it's not a significant amount of extra bioload". Got the mystery snail, nitrites still crazy high a day after a 75% water change after introducing the snail, ammonia consistently zero. Daily 50% water changes for a few days, nitrites down to 0.25 after each water change, then back up to violent purple after a few hours or so. Zero ammonia constantly.
My thinking process at that point was: "ok, well clearly the water sprite isn't doing enough (despite practically growing in front of my eyes), I'll get hornwort too." So I did. And then getting to the store with the new superbug covid strains on the news, I decided I didn't want to come back in a week to get the fish just to risk exposure again, so I got 10 black skirt tetras and bacterial starter. I was planning on getting tetra safe start plus, but alas, they were completely out for some reason. I ended up with Seachem Stability, figuring it should be just as good of a product. Did a 75% water change, primed the crap out of the tank to help with any nitrites, acclimated and introduced the fish, and introduced the hornwort.
As all y'all have probably guessed by this point in reading, I've effectively committed myself to doing a fish-in cycle with a lot of bioload for a 20gal. sigh. Thank god for Prime and a hubby who doesn't mind carrying buckets back and forth from the bathroom for me. I've heard amazing things about tetra safestart plus, things like "my cycle was complete in 4 days!", and I unfortunately can't say the same thing for seachem stability. I'm dosing daily and after each water change, and the bottle claims that the cycle should be established in 7 days, but I'm on day four and nitrites are still high and I am reading zero for nitrates.
Yesterday, after my 50% water change, I still had to dilute my tank water sample by 50% to get a reading of 0.25-.5, so I concluded that my tank after the water change was around 1ppm. I dosed prime accordingly, and today my diluted tank water sample was reading ?maybe? 1ppm (hard to tell between 'violent purple' and 'violent purple'), so I dosed prime again accordingly, and will do a water change tomorrow.
I'm basically doing 50% water changes every other day, and dosing prime accordingly in between. The fish seem fine, their coloration is good, their appetite is good (only feeding once a day to balance between giving them enough nutrition to fight suboptimal conditions and not introduce more bioload), etc. The snail I can tell doesn't love the high nitrites, his antennae are retracted a little relative to how he was doing when I just put him in a tupperware to observe. I also think that the fish are showing a little more aggression than what they might otherwise potentially due to the not-awesome water parameters.
So that's my confession. I've never done a planted cycle before, and I'm learning since this is clearly a different ballgame than a fishless cycle. As I said, thank god for prime, and thank god for zero ammonia. Conventional wisdom would have it that I should be done any day now, but it just doesn't seem to be going that way for some reason...
My lack of getting anything else done since I spend all my free time doing water changes now is kind of getting to me, so maybe I should have done things a little differently, but here we are. I do have to say, the tetras really like the water wisteria and the amazon swords in particular. Before the tetras showed up the snail was really into chowing down on cucumber slices, but hasn't been into it for the past couple of days, so I'm keeping an eye on that. I am just hoping, HOPING, that the friggin seachem stability will start to work soon and I will hopefully either a) see some nitrates or b) stop seeing nitrites. I'm fine with either, if the plants absorb all the nitrates I'm good with that. but geeze oh pete, these nitrites....
So that's been my past week or so in fishkeeping life. some days are better than others....