Umm Has Anyone Seen My Nitrites?

[chimera_786]

man!!! my tank hasn't yet started stage 2: ammonia 0ppm and nitrite xppm. Im doing a fish in cycle on 20 gallon with 3 rasboras and 2 zebra danios. The fish look fine and healthy. Honestly, i think they actually grew a bit. Which is cool as its been over a week now that my tank has residents in it. No fish loss. I dont want to speed up the process by increasing the temp, pH, and all that good stuff caz it feels like the fish are comfertable with the ph and the temp of the water. Can anyone offer an explanation as to why is the development of the nitrifying bacterias so slow? Im not over feeding as there is very little food that falls to the substrate and i cant get my hands on any matured media.

Also, the glass on all four sides of the aquarium is all stained with some white cloudy stuff. I was told that it was a mixture of algae and bacterias labeling it a biofilm. If it is indeed biofilm, so what stage am i on? and what more signs should i be looking out for (visible ones) excluding the test kit results.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

patience is a virtue.

cycling with fish, particularly when you're doing regular water changes can sometimes take several months, i'm not in the slightest bit surprised that you've not got any nitrites after a week. Just got to give it time I'm afraid.

Visual things are just to watch out for the health of the fish, familiarise yourself with some common diseases and their symptoms and keep a close eye out then just keep up daily testing and water changes.

 

[waterdrop]

totally normal - takes weeks for these to grow

If you're curious for some more scientifiky attempts at explanations you just have to remember that these bacteria are little singe-celled living things and they have their own little sequence of events they will follow and it takes time. Bacteria have a "Lag Phase" in their life-cycle that always occurs prior to their growth phase. The lag phase time varies by species. The two beneficial species we seek for our filters have fairly long lag phases and fairly slow growth, compared to many other species. Ours are pretty interesting critters, they are "chemolithoautotrophic" bacteria. The "litho" part means "eaters of rock" (I love that!)

When you are "fish-in" cycling you don't have the luxury of providing the "perfect soup" for growing these lithotrophs, as you have to maintain the right water for fish! With fishless cycling, you can really alter things and encourage the bacteria. The things they like are high temps, some hardness in the water, a high pH of 8.0-8.4, some light.. various specific things like that is what is thought. They will slowly grow in a wide range of conditions but some of these differences are thought to encourage max growth.

Since you absolutely -don't- want to do most of those things during fish-in cycling, your bacteria will grow more slowly, but you don't have any choice, so its easy, just settle back and keep ammonia and nitrite close to zero for the next few weeks or months.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[flippajh]

Just a quick one, I unfortunately did a fish-in cycle (should have visited here first!) I had nothing showing for about 2 weeks, then all of a sudden Ammonia went through the roof, then after that about a week the nitrites went sky high, and I spent the next week - 10 days having to massive water changes pretty much daily to get my nitrite levels to zero, but a kind person who was getting rid of some plants for free, also chucked a lump of sponge from an established tank in with them and from then on it got lower and lower - took about another week. Since then no problems at all with the water tests. But it does take a while.

 

[chimera_786]

Yeah i guess u guys are right. Just gonna have to wait it out. Thanks guys, especially you WD. Ur always explaining me stuff and i really do appreciate it. Your alright! Well lets see how long it takes for the tank to cycle!