Where did my cycle go?

[skiweeangel]

I finished a fishless cycle on my sons 55g and we added 6 gold long fin danios. Six from the LFS and two from our established 10g. I checked the ammonia levels evey day and noticed thy started to go up. I think I might have waited to long to add fish at the end of the cycle. I did a few days of PWC and the ammonia levels never went over .25ppm with no nitrites or nitrates detectable. So I have been checking for the past three days all three levels and doing PWC. Today when I checked the levels (at the same time as before) nothing was detectable. No ammonia nitrites or nitrates. Where did everything go? And yes, I double checked myself.

 

[Emclenaghan]

How old are your testing supplies? Are you using liquid or strips?

 

[Bettababe1011]

How did you do the fishless cycle? And how long did you wait after the end before you put the fish in?

 

[skiweeangel]

Testing supplies are two weeks old API liquid master test kit. And I followed the advice on this site for the cycle.

 

[Bettababe1011]

Did you give them an ammonia source for those few days after the cycle completed? It could be that the bacteria ran out of food and died.

 

[skiweeangel]

That is what I'm afraid of. We were delayed in getting the fish by my son getting pretty sick so I forgot to add some. So I figured I was starting from scratch.

 

[Emclenaghan]

Did you make sure you were following the directions for the nitrate test, shaking and all? I saw another similar post where that was the problem. It seems strange that your levels are all at zero. If there is no bacteria then you would expect there to be ammonia.

 

[straick]

I'm the other one with the nitrate test mess up. Didn't shake the test enough and my nitrates read 0 at one point(which they shouldn't have), until I did enough shaking.

 

[skiweeangel]

Shook it for just over 35 seconds. Made sure that there was precipitate in each drop.

 

[skiweeangel]

I think i figured it out. I have been doing a lot of PWC and I think the danios don't have a big bio load in the tank. I didn't do a PCW yesterday and my ammonia is back up to .25ppm. So it was just so low it wasn't registering.

 

[Emclenaghan]

Glad to hear! Just keep up what you have been doing, testing and PWC's, and you should get through the cycle with healthy fish.

 

[skiweeangel]

Lets keep our fingers crossed. Every one looks healthy and the two I took from the other tank look better.