Too much Ammonia

[Lithril]

Fishless cycling my new 30 gal tank and been adding about 2ml of 35% ammonia daily for about 5-6 days. Think I've been adding too much ammonia as i'm going to have to do a water change soon

Ammonia = 0 (YAY)
Nitrite = 4 (mg/l I think box downstairs)
Nitrate = 100 ml/l - Damn plants aren't consuming enough.

 

[Alien Anna]

Water changes shouldn't change things significantly at this stage and the nitrate will keep rising inexorable if you don't.

 

[andyt_uk]

lithril where did you get your ammonia?

 

[Lithril]

I work in a lab so took a small amount home from here.

AA - added another load of plants today, will do a water change tomorrow so I'm hoping that with the additional volume of plants the nitrate levels should start dropping off.

Need to start looking into doing something with the lights next one of the lights in the tank is the a big old tube tahts 2-3" in diameter and is heating the tank up to about 27C. Trouble is that the lighting unit that I want with tubes is gonna cost about another £50

 

[Moe]

I thought you had to wait until ammonia and nitrite were down to 0 then do an 80% water change to get rid of nitrate then add fish. That's how I did it. It worked fine.

 

[Lithril]

Thats what I was going to do but the nitrites are still high and I'm beginning to get problems with brown algae

 

[Alien Anna]

27C should be fine - I keep one of my tanks at a steady 28C all the time and its never been a problem (livebearers wouldn't like it that hot, however).

I agree that you want to get the nitrates down as you are getting hair algae. Since the beneficial bacteria live in the gravel and filter, water changes aren't going to change things significantly. The reason not to do too many at first is that you want some ammonia and nitrite when you're fishless cycling to get that bacteria going. But now you've just got nitrate levels rising there's no problem.