The Process Of A Lightly-Planted Fishless Cycling Tank

[NewFeesh]

Okay! Twenty days of cycling. I just wanna make sure I'm on track; I'll keep updating so I can get help when I get flummoxed, which seems to happen a lot as I cycle. I'm a little confused right now because my nitrAtes are dropping along with the nitrites. I do have a couple of plants--they eat nitrate, right? . . . Also, do nitrites generally start dropping this quickly?

Tank stats: 10 gallon, temp set at 86 F, AquaClear filter (10-30 gal, just recently changed name from AC 150). Four live plants, sand/gravel substrate, one piece of partially fungus-covered driftwood (slowly clearing-yay!. Two 10 watt fluorescent bulbs, giving 10-12 hours of light a day. Algae, snails, and nematodes, not worrying about atm.

pH currently at 8.5


Day Ammonia Nitrate Nitrite Notes.
8-Oct 5 0 0
9-Oct 5 0 0 Fungus growing on my driftwood.
10-Oct 5 0 0
11-Oct 5 0 0
12-Oct 4 0 0 exchanged bulbs for fluorescent
13-Oct 3 0 0 Where did the snails come from?!
14-Oct 2 0 0
15-Oct 2 0 0 Algae on walls on tank. Bleh.
16-Oct 2 0 0 Nematodes. Lovely.
17-Oct 2 0 0
18-Oct 2 0 0
19-Oct 2 0 0 Crumbled up flake of fish food and tossed in.
20-Oct 0.5 1 10 Ooooh. Things are happening!
21-Oct 0 3 20 Yay yay yay yay!!! Added 2 tsp more ammonia (to bring to 2 ppm)
22-Oct 0 4 40 From now on adding 2 tsps a day
23-Oct 0 4 40
24-Oct 0 4 40 Hey now. How does this happen?
25-Oct 0 4 50
26-Oct 0 7 70
27-Oct 0 10 80
28-Oct 0 7 70 I-what? Must be those darn plants.

How does this look? I'm surprised how quickly the nitrItes started dropping. And I'm confused about the drop in nitrAtes as well.

 

[NewFeesh]

I know the chart's a little hard to read; I can't seem to get it to let me fix it.

Today, my nitrIte was at 1 ppm and my nitrAte was at 0 ppm!

It's the plants, right? But NOW how am I supposed to tell who's getting my nitrite? Or do I just keep on measuring and when nitrite goes to 0 in 12 hours, go ahead and add the fish?

 

[KittyKat]

If you see the nitrates go up, then it's working. I would recommend waiting for an extra week after you think it is done before getting fish (or at least till the next weekend).

Also if you're not feeling too confident, then feed the fish very, very little to start with and gradually increase over a month or so (don't starve them, of course).

 

[frida]

I'm surprised that you're seeing 0ppm nitrates. Usually these go sky high during fishless cycling. I don't think plants make such a huge difference either... Can you remind us which test kit you're using?

 

[NewFeesh]

Heh. I'm using API for ammonia, but it's a test trip Nitrate/nitrite test. However, it seems to be pretty precise--at least, when the values were definitely zero (like at the beginning), I saw zero.

This morning at the 12-hour mark, nitrIte is up to 8 ppm and nitrAte is 40 ppm.

 

[frida]

Heh. I'm using API for ammonia, but it's a test trip Nitrate/nitrite test. However, it seems to be pretty precise--at least, when the values were definitely zero (like at the beginning), I saw zero.

This morning at the 12-hour mark, nitrIte is up to 8 ppm and nitrAte is 40 ppm.

I've never used strips because people keep on telling me they are useless... Not sure if that's true but if you keep on getting values that don't make sense, it might be worthwhile getting a liquid test. Also, if the values are off scale, it might look like it's 0 (at least with the liquid test, this can happen).

 

[KittyKat]

Not cycled yet then plants must have gotten a little kick out of something. You should probably get at least one test done in the LFS using liquid tests before adding fish, if you don't want to buy one.

 

[NewFeesh]

Kat, that's a very wise suggestion.

And I don't think the levels are off the chart for either of them . . . I've had off-the-chart Nitrite; it just looks real pink. It's white when it's zero.

And now, 12 hours later, the numbers are higher than zero again! I guess I'll see what happens at the 24-hour mark.

 

[waterdrop]

I might be forgetting other info but at least looking through this current thread it looks like the fishless cycle is still somewhere in the nitrite spike stage (unless those are all 12-hour results and the 3rd phase had already been reached I guess.) If its 20 days since the start and without mature media added then typically it might be about 1/3 through the fishless cycle (except that every cycle is pretty unpredictable and so it could always go faster luckily!)

Just a couple of thoughts: I tend to think of 86F as a tad high for fishless cycling. I like 84F better because of some comments Tim Hovanec made once about that subject. I also wonder about the 2 20w bulbs over a 10g tank. With that much light and all those hours and the ammonia for the cycling, I can't imagine there would not be an algae-fest after a while!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[NewFeesh]

I might be forgetting other info but at least looking through this current thread it looks like the fishless cycle is still somewhere in the nitrite spike stage (unless those are all 12-hour results and the 3rd phase had already been reached I guess.) If its 20 days since the start and without mature media added then typically it might be about 1/3 through the fishless cycle (except that every cycle is pretty unpredictable and so it could always go faster luckily!)

Just a couple of thoughts: I tend to think of 86F as a tad high for fishless cycling. I like 84F better because of some comments Tim Hovanec made once about that subject. I also wonder about the 2 20w bulbs over a 10g tank. With that much light and all those hours and the ammonia for the cycling, I can't imagine there would not be an algae-fest after a while!

~~waterdrop~~

Always appreciate your input, WD. I may have written the wattage wrong up there--they're two 10w bulbs for a total of 20w. I've had a bit of algae, but it's not insane. Of course, I also have snails and planeria that are enjoying it/the things that live in it, so that might be keeping it down a bit. I'll turn down the heat.

And the values are all for twenty-four hour increments; I just this morning started measure nI/nA every 12 hours 'cuz they were both 0 last night.

 

[waterdrop]

Good, I thing 20w total over it is much more normal. I'd suggest you consider dropping from 12 hours of light to 10 hours (when adjusting light periods always take in to account that each continuous period needs to be at least 4 hours long to let the plants rev up and get going.) Also note (perhaps for the future if you don't already do it) that many of us use simple lamp timers from the hardware store to control when our aquarium lights go on and off. By dropping your hours just a bit you might be able to lessen even your small amount of algae.

Regarding your fishless cycle, I sense from your comments in your log that you find yourself wondering sometimes why the various chemicals don't seem to behave logically and move in steady upward or downward movements. If that's the case then I think the thing that can help is to realize that unlike say a chemical reaction done in a lab, the tank is an environment of living things and when you take data from it you will always see "noise," meaning the up and down movement of your numbers in a non-linear way. What biologists do with this sort of thing is to always be looking for the "trend line" that might be happening over serveral more days, rather than trying to understand why it went up or down on only a single day. In fact, with fishless cycling its often useful to ask yourself how it went over a week, rather than a day (I'm not saying not to do daily and even twice a day testing and logging, just about how to think about the trend of the numbers.) Does that make sense?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[NewFeesh]

Ha, I guess you're right; I sort of expected things to move about in a semi-linear fashion. But all this dropping-to-zero nonsense is still confusing to me, since from the fishless cycle logs I've been watching get posted, this doesn't seem to happen much.

A timer to play with the lights sounds wonderful; I've been reading about them but I wasn't sure if it would work with the press on/off switch that's on my hood. I'll definitely have to check that out.

The newest (readable!) nitri/a/te stats from yesterday and today.

10-31
7 pm
Nitrite 1 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm

11-1
7 am
Nitrite 8 ppm
Nitrate 40 ppm

7 pm
Nitrite 2 ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, it might be true that if your light fixture is old enough, it will be the type where you need to hold the switch in until the fluorescent flickers on and then when you let off, it stays on. I believe those types can't be used on a lamp timer because they don't start the tube automatically. It would be easy to test by getting the lamp successfully on, then unplugging it from the wall and plugging it back in to see if it comes back on by itself (be careful, a wall socket is not really meant to be a switch and you don't want to shock yourself!)

The "dropping to zero" phrase we use so much refers to the following: The tank is dosed (a certain number of milliliters of ammonia syringed in) such that the ammonia concentration is then measured to be about 4-5ppm (except during some periods of the process we make that less for a while) and the hour at which this is done is sometimes called the "add-hour." We then sometimes (during the third phase of fishless cycling) test the ammonia at about 12 hours after the dose was put in. We nearly always then measure the ammonia at "the 24 hour mark" (24 hours after the ammonia dose was put in) and if at one or both of these different measuring times we observe that ammonia is now zero ppm concentration then we use the term "dropping to zero." Sometimes we refer to whatever the 12 hour test result was as "the 12 hour drop" or the measurement at 24 hours after dosing we might refer to "the 24 hour drop." If both ammonia and nitrite drop all the way to zero ppm concentrations then we often use the term "double-zeros." (Hope that acually might help with the confusing terms rather than seem just as complicated )

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Algae are plants, as are your other plants. All plants will consume nitrogen for growth and have a preference for ammonia rather than nitrates. The last thing they will want to use is nitrites. With that in mind, have another look at your numbers. You are seeing some decent consumption of ammonia, a bit of nitrate is being removed and nothing in the way of nitrites seems to be moving. All of this adds up to a good planted situation removing some of the nitrogen in the system but far from all of it. From your numbers I am going to guess that you are just starting to see the beginning of a nitrite drop due to the N-bacs in your filter. You are not close to being complete yet but are seeing some effect from the filter on your nitrites. Another week or so may give us much more data to judge how well the N-bac colony is developing.

 

[NewFeesh]

Cool. Well those plants can eat all the nitrate they want. Just as long as they leave the nitrite for my bacteria.