cycle question

[reeferman420]

Fishless cycling a 40 breeder with wet dry sump. I'm using pure ammonia. I added enough for 4ppm to read on api liquid test kit. I added the ammonia 16 days ago and its still reading the same 4ppm ammonia. I added two bottles of tetra safestart the day after I added the ammonia. So my question is, shouldn't I be seeing an ammonia drop and nitrite spike by now? My parameters are as followed:

Ammonia-4ppm
Nitrite-0ppm
Nitrate-0ppm
KH-50ppm
GH-25ppm

Ph-7.8
Temp-84°

 

[Mebbid]

Yeah, it is odd to not see a rise in nitrites after that long of a time. What did you use for a water conditioner?

 

[reeferman420]

I used Jungle Start Right and Tetra Safe Start when I first filled the tank and sump. I haven't done anything except test the tank daily.

I *always add Tetra Safe Start at the start up as it usually speeds up the cycle*

 

[Mebbid]

Is it possible that the ammonia has surfactants in it? Also, do you have any tanks available to get some seeded material from? A friend or lfs that could give you a piece of their filter?

 

[Fishperson]

Is it possible that the ammonia has surfactants in it? Also, do you have any tanks available to get some seeded material from? A friend or lfs that could give you a piece of their filter?

I agree, something is fishy here. I just can't put my FINger on it. Pretty good huh?

Anyway, one reason could be, like mebbid mentioned, that you have surfactants killing the bacteria. Also, perfume might by an ingredient, that is bad too. You dechlorinate the water right? And there are no fish in there and you didn't add any more ammonia after the first time? Are there plants in there? Maybe do a water change and lower the ammonia. You could have overdosed and are just geting a glitchy reading. The API test kits are notorious for that kind of stuff . It stalled my cycle when the nitrite went >10ppm and the test kit shows 0. Then I do a 50% water change and voila!, it's at 6 ppm.

 

[reeferman420]

Id rather not risk introducing anythng with seeded media. Just in case. Also I use ace hardware janitorial ammonia, no perfumes etc. I use jungle start right as dechlorinator. No plants yet, just substrate. I'm gonna do small water change and give it few days. I've never had a tank be so uncooperative!

 

[reeferman420]

So, I did a pwc last night. 5 gallons to be exact, which is about 12% of my system. Checked ammonia level this morning still sitting at 4ppm. Should I give it another day or do another pwc?

 

[Mebbid]

It couldn't hurt to let it sit another day

 

[reeferman420]

I should also mention I'm using bio balls in the wet dry for first time as I use plastic pot scrubbers in my other systems. Could this be causing the extended nonsense with ammonia? I'm using about 4 gal bucketfull of 1in bio balls. Just curious

 

[Mebbid]

That's a lot of balls

I don't assume they would be hurting the process any, although the plastic pot scrubbers might be a bight more efficient at holding BB than the bio balls.

 

[reeferman420]

Lol a lot of balls indeed. My lfs swears by these things so figured give a shot. Ill kick into patience mode and see what happens