weird water parameters.... help again!

[blipblop]

so this fishless cycle is DOING something... after like 2.5 months... my water parameters as of 10 minutes ago in my 10G is

ammonia = 4-5 ppm
nitrITE = 0 ppm
nitrATE = 15-25 ppm

what's going on and why do i have ammonia?

[Madame_X]

Need a lot more info to know for sure.

How many fish are in the tank? How often (and how much) do you do water changes? Are you missing any fish? What kind of filtration do you have?

[blipblop]

heh, read a bit more carefully my friend, in the beginning i said fishless cycle... =]

[pkremer]

What did you use as the ammonia source? Was it pure ammonia, dead fish/shrimp, fish food, etc?

Did you put one load of ammonia in or in several loads? How much ammonia? How high did the ammonia reading get originally?

One good thing is that clearly you have both ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria starting to grow, otherwise the nitrates would be 0. Perhaps the ammonia eating bacteria simply hasn't taken care of the original large load (or loads) of ammonia you put in, and the nitrite eating bacteria is starting to grow and is eating every single bit of nitrite the ammonia eaters are producing. If this is the case, a little more patience will find the ammonia level slowly dropping until it hits zero, nitrites will probably not register again, and then it's fish time!

Paul

[blipblop]

yea i used pure ammonia, every morning i put 15-20 drops in it. [only a 10g tank] and yes, the ammonia has dropped since a few days ago. it was a dark dark green, now i can see it getting lighter a bit.

[pkremer]

Excellent!

Then I would recommend leaving it alone starting right now, no more additions of ammonia. Test it every day (or every other), depending on how slowly the ammonia level is dropping. There is no need to continue adding ammonia at this point, as the cycle is in full swing. The nitrite-eaters are already in place and chowing the nitrites, which is why the nitrates are up at a fairly decent level.

Letting the tank sit starting now will allow the ammonia eaters to slowly consume the rest of the ammonia, the nitrite eaters will eat all their waste, and in a very short time you will have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite. Add fish the day this happens, and you are good to go!

Congrats!
Paul

[chasgood]

Sounds right to me pkremer.
I will try fishless on my next tank.

[Madame_X]

Originally Posted by blipblop

heh, read a bit more carefully my friend, in the beginning i said fishless cycle... =]

Sorry about that... since you said it had been going for 2 1/2 months, I incorrectly assumed that you had started with a fishless cycle but had added fish.

It just seemed like a really long time for things to still be cycling. My first tank which I did fishless was finished in about 4 or 5 weeks.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions.