What went wrong with my cycle?

[Gubernaculum86]

I'm cycling a 5gal hex that's been going now for about 2 weeks. Im doing a fishless cycle with raw shrimp.

I wanted to make it a planted aquarium so I added some plants about a week into the cycle. The water is now dark brown and the ammonia has been between 4.0 and 8.0 ppm since I added the plants. I also added root tabs to the gravel, the instructions said to do one tab for every 30 sq inches. The base of my tank came out to just under 100 sq inches so i added 3 tabs about half way into the gravel.

Did I overload the bacteria or something. I'm about to 50% PWC to see if that helps at all.

 

[uh.oh...]

I hate those root tabs. I also wound up with brown water. It seems like if they're not far enough down in the substrate the water will cloud up. I had to take them out of my 10 gallon, and gradually PWC until it was clear again. They also clogged the filter floss. As for the fishless cycle thing. I'd remove the shrimp, if you haven't already. Test your ammonia again, and also test for Nitrite. If you have the nitrite, do the water change. If you don't, wait till you get some. Then when your ppm get medium on the scale (or incredibly high like my coworkers did) do the pwc. The beauty of a fishless cycle is there are no fish to kill, so the pwc isn't necessarily required.

 

[Gubernaculum86]

Bah. That means I got to dig them out of the gravel, not even sure if I remember where they are to be honest. I'm thinking it's the added iron in the tabs that turns in brown. The plants seem happy waters just nasty looking.
As with the shrimp I don't have any nitrIte yet. But I was told to keep it in as long as possible to keep a food supply for the ammonia eating bacteria.

 

[uh.oh...]

Thats what the shrimp does yes. And leaving it in is fine, but the ammonia eating bacteria have to grow before they can eat it. So, your Ammonia will spike (eventually), followed by a cloudy water spike (thats the bacteria growing out of control). They'll die off, and you'll have some Nitrite in your tank. When that happens your cycle is well on its way. Eventually the nitrite will decline and you'll have just trace amounts of Nitrate. Then you're completely cycled. You can also just buy hardware store ammonia to start the cycle. I'd still take the shrimp out when you see the nitrite though. You'll have enough ammonia from that decaying shrimp by that time to not have to worry about the cycle dying. Add fish when the Ammonia and Nitrite are low to nill.

As for the cloudy water thing, not sure what it is. I ended up removing them too. My 55g planted uses Flourite, gravel, and sand as a substrate. I didn't rinse the flourite before adding; ended up with a swamp monster for a few weeks. eventually I took out everything, and rinsed the substrate, recycled the tank. Not very fun

 

[Gubernaculum86]

Urgh guess I'll just keep waiting. Thanks for the advice.

 

[uh.oh...]

np. It won't take too long though. Cycling for me is usually around 2 or three weeks.

 

[Gubernaculum86]

It's frustrating as heck bc I'm doing my g/fs 10 gal at the same time. And hers is just about done. Ammo is .25 nitrites 0 and nitrates 10. Done the same way except she has fake plants.
But I'd rather have mine be screwy then it be her tank lol