Please Help!

[Dlee13]

Perfectly fine and perfectly normal! No need to be concerned unless you see huge amounts of algae developing.

Ok thanks for the confirmation I have had one before but I removed which I now think was the wrong thing to do and could of slowed my cycle! I'm going to try add a pinch of fish food tomorrow and see if that helps!

Also could the hardness of our water be the problem? How do we go about testing it?

 

[jlk]

Hardness is broken down into GH (general hardness/mineral content) and KH (carbonate hardness/alkalinity). API makes liquid tests for both. Unless they are nonexistent or extremely low, hardness levels are not a big concern. If they are very low to nonexistent, then it would be apparent by ph as it would be very low or unstable and crash constantly. Low ph and lack of GH/KH would prevent a cycle from ever starting. I don't believe you are having issues with ph that would indicate a problem.

If your interested in ''ballpark'' numbers, the chain stores use strips that measure GH/KH and you could bring some water (tank and tap) for testing. If your lucky enough to have a good lfs that uses liquid tests (usually those with big sw sections have them), this would be better. It never hurts to have more information!

 

[Dlee13]

Hardness is broken down into GH (general hardness/mineral content) and KH (carbonate hardness/alkalinity). API makes liquid tests for both. Unless they are nonexistent or extremely low, hardness levels are not a big concern. If they are very low to nonexistent, then it would be apparent by ph as it would be very low or unstable and crash constantly. Low ph and lack of GH/KH would prevent a cycle from ever starting. I don't believe you are having issues with ph that would indicate a problem.

If your interested in ''ballpark'' numbers, the chain stores use strips that measure GH/KH and you could bring some water (tank and tap) for testing. If your lucky enough to have a good lfs that uses liquid tests (usually those with big sw sections have them), this would be better. It never hurts to have more information!

Ok well my PH level has been a steady 7.6 the whole time so I don't think I will need to test the GH/KH, plus my LFS isn't too helpful.

From what you told me before about the biofilm being normal, is it actually a positive part of a fishless cycle? I see some people say it doesn't contain the right type of bacteria where as others say it is an important part of the cycle? sorry for all the questions, I'm very new to fishkeeping.

 

[Liberty2k4]

Yeah my ph holds steady too. I don't know if this is good news or not (too soon to tell) but two days ago I added a pinch of finely ground flakes (I figure if we try everything together we might find success) and so yesterday my ammonia showed a slightly darker green- much closer to 1 than .5 where it has been. Is it possible for fish food to raise ammo this much or was it just false reading? Tested again today and it was solidly 0.5 again. No nitrites BUT nitrates are up to 10 from 5...

 

[jlk]

Yeah my ph holds steady too. I don't know if this is good news or not (too soon to tell) but two days ago I added a pinch of finely ground flakes (I figure if we try everything together we might find success) and so yesterday my ammonia showed a slightly darker green- much closer to 1 than .5 where it has been. Is it possible for fish food to raise ammo this much or was it just false reading? Tested again today and it was solidly 0.5 again. No nitrites BUT nitrates are up to 10 from 5...

An increase in nitrate and a drop in ammonia- this is progress!

 

[Liberty2k4]

Hopefully but I've seen ammonia drops before that didn't progress. I've actually never seen it get below 0.5. Crossing my fingers that this cycle is finally starting!

 

[jlk]

Ok well my PH level has been a steady 7.6 the whole time so I don't think I will need to test the GH/KH, plus my LFS isn't too helpful.

From what you told me before about the biofilm being normal, is it actually a positive part of a fishless cycle? I see some people say it doesn't contain the right type of bacteria where as others say it is an important part of the cycle? sorry for all the questions, I'm very new to fishkeeping.

Good bacteria colonize on every surface in tank. This includes glass. Granted, the amount of good bacteria on tank/décor/substrate surfaces is minimal when compared to what grows in your filter media. The filter media has a constant supply of food and oxygen (oxygen is very, very important!) and large amount of real estate for bacteria to colonize on. I wipe off the front and sides of my tanks

I forget if I asked this or not, but do both of you guys have lots of aeration in your tanks?

 

[Dlee13]

Hopefully but I've seen ammonia drops before that didn't progress. I've actually never seen it get below 0.5. Crossing my fingers that this cycle is finally starting!

Good luck I hope yours is starting! At it's best my tank only ever had 0.25ppm of nitrite which was 2 weeks ago! I think where I went wrong was I added ammonia too soon after my nitrites show up and I didn't turn my filter off when I've done water changes which may be the problem for me.

Good bacteria colonize on every surface in tank. This includes glass. Granted, the amount of good bacteria on tank/décor/substrate surfaces is minimal when compared to what grows in your filter media. The filter media has a constant supply of food and oxygen (oxygen is very, very important!) and large amount of real estate for bacteria to colonize on. I wipe off the front and sides of my tanks

I forget if I asked this or not, but do both of you guys have lots of aeration in your tanks?

Ok thanks for the explanation, I haven't really cleaned anything since I got my tank set up besides doing pwc but as stated above I think that may be the reason for my cycle stalling before.

My filter supposedly does 550L/hour but since the water outtake is about 2 inches from the water surface (it's an overhead filter) I put a air stone in today to help with aeration. I added my fish food only last night and no change in ammonia so far and no nitrites so I guess I'll have to wait another few days and see.

 

[Liberty2k4]

I've got a 14" bubble wand. Haven't tested yet this morning but will do soon. As I said, I've never seen ammo go below 0.5 but if it ever does I'll probably fall over from shock. Lol

 

[Dlee13]

I've got a 14" bubble wand. Haven't tested yet this morning but will do soon. As I said, I've never seen ammo go below 0.5 but if it ever does I'll probably fall over from shock. Lol

haha good luck, maybe put a pillow behind you in case the Ammonia shows up as 0 When I tested my tank this morning, the fish food had only been in there for less than 12 hours and the airstone was just put it so I'm gonna give it till at least tomorrow before I get annoyed! lol

 

[Liberty2k4]

Good luck to you too! I bet the air stone will help a lot

 

[Dlee13]

Good luck to you too! I bet the air stone will help a lot

Thanks let us know how your test turns out! Yeah I hope so, I had to lower the water level a tiny but so the bubbles weren't so loud.

 

[Liberty2k4]

As I feared/suspected, ammo remains 0.5. I added 1mL and will retest in about half hour. I want to see if ammo is not dropping at all or just stubbornly won't go below 0.5 for some reason...

 

[phin9009]

I haven't followed this whole thread, but have you tested your tap water for ammonia? My tap water contains 0.25ppm ammonia (one of several reasons I'm using 100% ro water)...maybe that could be why your ammonia isn't dropping

 

[Liberty2k4]

Tap has 0 ammonia. I appreciate the idea though

 

[phin9009]

Hmm ok. I know how frustrating it can be with fishless cycling. I'm currently 6 weeks into my fishless, and an finally seeing promising progress. This is after seeding it 3 separate times from established healthy tanks.

Hopefully someone here has other ideas about why your ammonia refuses to drop further...

 

[Liberty2k4]

If you don't mind my asking, what did you do differently that seemed to get things going finally?

 

[phin9009]

I re dosed the tank to 4ppm ammonia, squeezed all of my filter floss in the tank water then put it back in my filter, and the following day added sponge filter "mud" (squeezed out water and gunk from a sponge filter) from 2 tanks at my lfs. A few days after that I finally started seeing changes

 

[Liberty2k4]

Thanks. I'm glad your cycle is finally going somewhere Unfortunately the nearest fish store is over an hour from me and judging by the health of their fish, I don't think I'd want their media. I tried the angelsplus sponges but no luck. Guess I'm going to try shrimp method this weekend... Ewww.

 

[phin9009]

Yeah you want to make sure the tanks are healthy. What shipping option did you choose for the sponges? I heard you had to do 2 days or less for them to have any chance of still having live bacteria...