26 Gal Won't Cycle?

[WisChris]

I am 49 days in and no cycle. Moderately planted, EcoComplete substrate, medium light, pressurized CO2, C-220 canister & 4 Bloodfin Tetras.

Ammonia levels have ranged from 0 to trace amounts, and I've yet to see any nitrites or nitrates. I am about to give up, not sure if I'm close or it's time to change the plan, return the tetras and try fish less cycling?

7 weeks seems like I'm on the high end of the usual timeline, so beginning to think something is not right.

I appreciate any thoughts, thank you!

 

[HeatherW]

so Wischris I have this question for you... what are you doing to cycle this tank? are you doing a fish-in cycle or fish-less?

 

[dcutl002]

My 2 cents worth: I add BioZyme or some other equivalent "friendly" bacteria product. Sometimes I'll use water from an established tank.

 

[HeatherW]

so after reading this more closely I think I see that you are doing a fish-in cycle with 4 tetras in a 26g tank. right? you have only seen trace ammonia and never nitrite or nitrate.
sounds to me like you are doing just fine, but you are NOT cycled. the reason this is taking a while is that your fish are not producing lots of waste and this is slowing down your cycle. you have several options here. first, you can return or rehome those little tetras and do a fish-less cycle. this is easier and possibly faster compared to what you are doing.
second option is to add more fish in there to increase your bio-load. this will increase the ammonia, speed up your cycle and cause you to start jumping through hoops on water changes once the ammonia starts to climb.
third option - just stay with it and your tank will cycle.
I have done both - fish-in and fish-less. Both take time and the key to both of these options is ammonia (fish waste or from the bottle). the more ammonia in your tank the more your good bacteria will have to work to convert it into nitrites and then the other good guys will convert to nitrate and then you will have to do water changes to get rid of the nitrate. Hopefully you have read up on all of this and know what I am talking about.
since you have never seen nitrites and do not have nitrates we know you are not cycled. the advantage to a fish-less cycle is you can bump up your ammonia and just let your tank do its thing. with a fish-in cycle you can't keep your ammonia high because it will kill your fish, so you are going to be doing daily water changes at some point in time - you are just not there yet.

 

[Fresh2o]

Contact AA member Mr Fisher. Sells established media and has had positive feedback from members who "hit the wall" so to speak while cycling. Recently posted in the classified section that 2 batches of media are ready to go.

 

[Mebbid]

Everything sounds perfectly fine to me. In a tank like that you are going to have an extremely small population of beneficial bacteria. With having a co2 injected tank the plants are consuming the ammonia as quickly as its being created by the fish. I haven't had any ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates in my heavily stocked 55g tank in months because my plants have been doing the same thing.

Go ahead and add another 4 fish or so to see how your levels react.

As for the additives or water from an established tank, the additives are hit or miss. Some people have a lot of luck with them while others like myself have had absolutely no success.

The established water is also an exercise in futility as the water is fairly devoid of nitrifying bacteria that we want. It's all on the filter media.

 

[dcutl002]

I totally agree. I let my 55 gallon cycle for 3 months before adding fish. I could not make up my mind what type of fish that I wanted to add.

 

[WisChris]

so Wischris I have this question for you... what are you doing to cycle this tank? are you doing a fish-in cycle or fish-less?

Hi HeatherW,
Thanks for responding…I had originally planned to go Fishless, but the LFS suggested I go fish-in & I ended up with 4 bloodfin tetras. They thought that was enough bioload to cycle my tank & I'd get there faster vs. fishless.

 

[HeatherW]

well unfortunately they were wrong lol! I think if you had gone fishless you would be done now, but now you have to decide where you want to go from here. I would say more fish or no fish. You sound like you want to progress faster than you are.

 

[WisChris]

so after reading this more closely I think I see that you are doing a fish-in cycle with 4 tetras in a 26g tank. right? you have only seen trace ammonia and never nitrite or nitrate.
sounds to me like you are doing just fine, but you are NOT cycled. the reason this is taking a while is that your fish are not producing lots of waste and this is slowing down your cycle. you have several options here. first, you can return or rehome those little tetras and do a fish-less cycle. this is easier and possibly faster compared to what you are doing.
second option is to add more fish in there to increase your bio-load. this will increase the ammonia, speed up your cycle and cause you to start jumping through hoops on water changes once the ammonia starts to climb.
third option - just stay with it and your tank will cycle.
I have done both - fish-in and fish-less. Both take time and the key to both of these options is ammonia (fish waste or from the bottle). the more ammonia in your tank the more your good bacteria will have to work to convert it into nitrites and then the other good guys will convert to nitrate and then you will have to do water changes to get rid of the nitrate. Hopefully you have read up on all of this and know what I am talking about.
since you have never seen nitrites and do not have nitrates we know you are not cycled. the advantage to a fish-less cycle is you can bump up your ammonia and just let your tank do its thing. with a fish-in cycle you can't keep your ammonia high because it will kill your fish, so you are going to be doing daily water changes at some point in time - you are just not there yet.

Thank you HeatherW. I'm leaning towards returning the Tetras to the LFS and going fish less. The Tetras were never intended to be permanent & I'm concerned about the prospect of daily water changes. I've heard of "silent cycles" in planted tanks, and thought maybe that's what I've got going?
Thanks!

 

[Coursair]

Silent Cycles are usually in heavily planted tanks. But I did think that might be your case as well.


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[dcutl002]

It will cycle. It takes time.

 

[Mebbid]

It will cycle. It takes time.

Technically, It's already cycled. No ammonia or nitrites in the tank.

 

[dcutl002]

No worries.

 

[HeatherW]

Mebbid - tank is not cycle because there are no nitrates.

 

[Mebbid]

Mebbid - tank is not cycle because there are no nitrates.

Detectable nitrates. With the plants consuming all available nitrogen then it's really just a debate on semantics. Is my 55g that has been up over a year not cycled because there are no nitrates in the tank? The same goes for my 10g that has been set up for nearly 10 months without any nitrates.

As corsair stated, it's a silent cycle. Using plants to completely bypass the ammonia / nitrite stage of the cycle.

Although, I would like to point out that this is all depending on if the nitrate test is getting performed correctly by the OP.

To Wischris - Are you following the directions on the test kit to the letter? Improperly done nitrate tests regularly result in a 0ppm reading which would account for your 0 nitrate readings.

 

[Brookster123]

I think it's cycled too, i agree with mebbid, the co2 fueled plants are consuming the nitrates as fast as they are being produced.. I think you should add some more fish and monitor levels closely..

 

[WisChris]

Thank you Corsair, Brookster, mebbid & all.

I shake the Nitrate bottle #2 silly for 30 sec per API instructions. I could try to do it longer & retest. But I have never seen Nitrite, either?

So at this stage it's either return the fish and finish "fish-less", or return the fish and start adding my intended occupants. None of them are what I'd call "hardy" so hope I'm not taking too much of a risk?

My final stock will consist of 6 Purple Pencilfish, 5 Sterbai Cories, 3 Otocinclus, and 7-9 Green Neon Tetras/Neon Tetras.

Out of the above stocking plan, I'm thinking I could start with the Sterbai Cories, does that sound reasonable?

Thanks again everyone, I really appreciate it

 

[Mebbid]

Personally I would start with the tetras. I would just stock your intended number on them. After a week or two add the corys, then go from there. I wouldn't worry about starting over fishless.

On the other side of things do you add any fertilizers to your tank? Most people using injected co2 go with dry ferts as its low cost and very very effective. You also don't really want your nitrate level below 10ppm for the plants. A dry fert pack from green leaf aquariums will come with a nitrate supplement. Improper fertilization can lead to a pretty bad algae bloom.

 

[WisChris]

Personally I would start with the tetras. I would just stock your intended number on them. After a week or two add the corys, then go from there. I wouldn't worry about starting over fishless.

On the other side of things do you add any fertilizers to your tank? Most people using injected co2 go with dry ferts as its low cost and very very effective. You also don't really want your nitrate level below 10ppm for the plants. A dry fert pack from green leaf aquariums will come with a nitrate supplement. Improper fertilization can lead to a pretty bad algae bloom.

mebbid…
I'm doing a bit of a rescape next week, and using total pellets from aquarium plants.com in conjunction with Seachem Flourish Comprehensive and Seachem Flourish Potassium. The above scheme is what aquarium plants.com recommended, so I hope they have me on the right track.