Water Change During Fishless Cycle

[Amunet]

Alrighty, so I did a water change last night right before I added in the ammonia.
The tank was just UBER dirty (imagine dust building up but only in your tank) and I needed to test out the pH to see if doing water changes was going to affect it any.
Well I did a 50% water change.
Added in the usual amount of ammonia afterwards and left it. The water turned cloudy as usual after I added in the ammonia. Everything seemed to be just fine.
Well this morning, after 10hrs... I did tests again just to see where everything was at.
Ammonia was still at about 2-3 and there was no nitrites.
So I tested nitrates and those are at about 40.
Now before this, nitrite and ammonia would be at almost 0 within 12hrs.. so readings like this of course has got me very worried.

What is going on?
Why are there no nitrites? Does it just take a while after a semi-large water change for readings to get back to normal or something?

I added in a little bit more ammonia just in case the test was picking up a false reading. Tested nitrites a few hrs later and still none. I'll test it again later on to see if there is any change.

And before anyone asks it... yes I used dechlorinator. It's just regular tap water conditioner that gets rid of the usual stuff. Nothing that affects ammonia, nitrite or nitrate.

I'm just really worried that I might've messed something up.

 

[rdd1952]

A water change shouldn't have any adverse effect on the cycling process as long as you add ammonia back and don't disturb the filter media. I'm not sure why your tank is going cloudy after adding ammonia though. Ammonia has never had any effect at all on the appearance of my tanks during a fishless cycle.

 

[Amunet]

It'll only go cloudy for about 30min to an hour. Like it's a bacteria bloom.
It's been doing this for a little over a week now whenever I've added in ammonia.

 

[Amunet]

Ok so.. I did some more tests like an hour ago... and well.. ammonia has now gone up to about 5-6... I would do a water change to reduce that some but of course, we're out of dechlorinator and can't get more until tomorrow.
AND nitrite still hasn't shown up.
What is going on?
I didn't do anything to the filters.
I just cleaned up the debris gunky stuff that was on everything and that was it.
Why is ammonia not budging? What happened to my nitrites!?

uuuugh I hope I didn't screw anything up........

 

[rdd1952]

If your ammonia and nitrite were going from 5 ppm of ammonia to 0 of both in about 12 hours, your tank was cycled. At that point, you probably wouldn't see any nitrite again. As the ammonia was being broken down to nitrite, the bacteria would process it at the same time so at most there would only be a trace of nitrite. You should however see the ammonia dropping and the nitrate rising.

Are you saying that the ammonia went up from 2-3 ppm to 5-6 ppm without you adding any more? It shouldn't rise on it's own unless there is something in the tank that is decaying and being changed into ammonia and even at that it shouldn't be that fast.

 

[Amunet]

I don't think the tank was quite done cycling just yet. It was ALMOST to 0 after 12hrs but not quite there.

No no... after I got the reading of 2-3... I thought maybe I was getting a false reading since I wasn't getting any nitrite reading, so I added in a little more ammonia just in case.
And now after I added it, the ammonia is staying at 5-6 and not dropping at all.
I'm gonna do more tests in a few more hours to see if there is any change or not.

Anyways.... you would think that the bacteria would be eating up the ammonia that's in the tank now but it's not and it's worrying me that me changing the water somehow screwed something up. Why I dunno...
Wouldn't it suck if all of that gunk I sucked out of the tank was holding the bacteria! hehe

 

[rdd1952]

Unless you sucked it from the filter, I don''t think you have to worry about it being bacteria. It's strange that it has done that. I think I would actually do another water change of about 50% to see if it jump starts it again. As I said, the water change shouldn't have had any adverse effect on the bacteria.

 

[Amunet]

I think I know what's wrong now.
We have a pH tester that sits in the tank, and right now it's reading a pH of only 5.2.
I guess maybe the ammonia made it drop so low? Or that mixed with the water change, even though I thought a water change would've helped raise the pH since the tap water is 7.5 pH.. *shrugs*
Does bacteria die at a low pH like that?
God I hope not....

We'll be going to the petstore tomorrow where I can get some pH upper and more dechlorinator.... I just hope it's not going to be too late to save the bacteria that's left.

 

[ziggyboy]

I can see that you have other tanks. Did you get filter media from these other tanks? If not you can try to run an established filter on the new tank or your new filter on an established tank, preferably the 10G one. And yes, bacteria growth is inhibited at low PH.

 

[rdd1952]

At low pH levels, the bacteria will continue to process ammonia and nitrite but reproduction slows or stops so the bacteria clony doesn't increase in size. Ammonia also changes to ammonium at somewhere around 6.0 or lower and I have heard people say that the bacteria that breaks ammonia down is different from the one that breaks ammonium down but have never seen any article that gives evidence to that effect. It would seem as though that is exactly what has happened in your case though. But since your tank was processing ammonia and nitrite before you did the water change and the water change would have raised the pH and not lowered it, then its hard to see that as an issue.

If you decide to get the pH adjuster, use it for your cycling purposes only. Don't use it once you add fish as it will keep your pH in a constant swing. A small amount of crushed coral in the filter or a piece of tufa stone work much better for raising the pH naturally and keeping it stable.

 

[Stroker]

I almost wonder if when you added tha last batch of amonia you might have gone over 6ppm. My tester maxes out around there so I wonder if that is the case and you just need to wait till it can get it back bellow the 5-6 mark before you do anything. I would also retest both the ph from the tap and in the tank to verify what is going on there. My bet is your ready to add fish once your amonia gets back down. Just take a vallume and enjoy the fire works tonight, everything will be hunky dory in the morning.

 

[Amunet]

Lol, well we did end up getting some more pH upper stuff.
I had to use almost half the bottle just to get the pH up to slightly over 6.
I also tested ammonia and nitrite again, and surprisingly, ammonia was almost 0 while there was no nitrite.
So I guess the bacteria was still there, but b/c of the extremely low pH it just slowed down a great deal.
I haven't put in any more ammonia yet. Waiting for 10pm to come so I can get back to the schedule I was on before.
I think the tank is ready for fish as well. We'll probably get some this weekend if all tests come back normal again after 12hrs.

I'm going to try not to use this pH stuff when we get fish.
There is already a good amount of coral in the tank and I'm hoping it's going to help keep the pH up enough after the tank is done cycling.

 

[rdd1952]

If your pH is 7.4 from the tap, I would do a large water change to get the pH back up over 7.0.

 

[Amunet]

Well I thought the partial water change that I did would've raised it some considering it was 50%. Why do you think the pH dropped so dramatically?

 

[rdd1952]

There are several things that can cause it but that is a big drop. When a tank is cycling, the pH can jump around.