Am I doing something wrong?

[ShanLPardy]

Ok, so I finally got everything I needed to get my 29G aquarium set up. I put in a layer of Fluval planting Stratum, granule format, for my live plants, covered it with about 2 inches of CaribSea Super Naturals sand. Added the water, set up the filter (AquaClear 30), got it going. I added Aquasafe Plus, Tetra Quick Cycle), and let it all go for a week.
The initial cloudiness has cleared up quite a nice bit, but there's a yellowish tinge to the water that doesn't seem to be leaving.
I have an ApI Freshwater Master Test Kit and I've been checking the water every 2 days. I read that there should be an initial ammonia bloom or something, and then the numbers should go down, etc etc. But according to the kit, everything is still at 0 ppm. I assumed that was because I don't actually have any fish in there yet, but some web sites still list a surge in chemicals, even without the fish.

Any help is greatly appreciated, as I am very new to this.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Yes, you are doing something wrong.

Ammonia cant just appear in the water. If you are doing a fish in cycle, the ammonia comes from fish waste. If you are doing a fishless cycle you have to dose ammonia. This can be pure ammonia, an aquarium specific ammonium chloride product. Many people use fish food or a cocktail shrimp which will produce ammonia when they decompose in tge water.

Ammonium chloride is the best way to go.

 

[Andy Sager]

For starters, any bacteria in a bottle you use ( some are better than others) are supposed to be live cultures so they need ammonia present in the tank in order to survive. By adding it then not adding an ammonia source ( i.e. fish or ammonia) at the same time, you basically wasted the cycling product because the bacteria died off. The only exception to this would be if the stratum was leeching ammonia into the water and you can check that by either taking a sample of water just above the substrate and test it for ammonia or take a small sample of the substrate from the bag ( not the tank) into a container and 24 hours later, test the water for ammonia.
The yellow tint could be coming from the Stratum ( I've not used this product before so I'm only hypothesizing since the sand should not cause yellowing. ) and would not be considered harmful but if you want to get rid of it, you can use products like Carbon or filter pads like Poly-Filters to get the color out.
From this point, IF your stratum is not leeching ammonia, you will need to add ammonia producers and ammonia consumers to cycle the tank. If the Stratum is not leeching ammonia, after you add some fish or ammonia, you should start to see an increase in ammonia and adding the live bacteria product then should decrease the level in a matter of a couple days. At that point, if your tests are showing no ammonia or nitrites and is showing some nitrates, it will show that the biological process ( what many call cycling, I like to call it the biological filter) is active and working. If the Stratum was leeching ammonia, you should be seeing nitrates. If there are no nitrates ( assuming no nitrates are in your source water) , there is no active biological filter.

Things to keep in mind:
1) The biological filter is a living breathing organism that grows and shrinks to the amount of ammonia present at the time. That means that if you add 2 little fish into the tank and your tank goes through the ammonia and nitrite cycles, your tank is " cycled" for the 2 little fish. If your start your tank with 10 little fish or 1 large fish, your tank is " cycled" for the 10 little fish/1 large fish. So don't think just because you started with 1 or 2 fish that when the tank cycles, you can add a lot of fish to it without consequences. This is why you need to add things slowly as you go.

2) I read a lot of complaints online about the Tetra cycling products. Make sure your bottle has not past it's expiration date on it or has been exposed to excessive heat. Both of those will cause the bacteria in the bottle to die off. On a personal level, I've tried a number of brands of cycling products over the years and the only one I've found to consistently work is Fritzyme #7. If you have that product available where you are, I highly recommend it. I've used it in my home tanks, pets shops and wholesale houses with great success. I first started using it decades ago when it first came on the market. It's just that good.

3) With the API nitrate test reagents, you really have to shake them up before adding the drops or they will show a 0 level no matter what the actual level is.

Hope this helps.

 

[ShanLPardy]

Ah, see, I assumed the ammonia would have been in the quick cycle bottle, seeing it's hype was "everything you need to cycle your tank!" and all that. I used to keep fish a (long long) time ago, and it was pretty much fill the aquarium, let it sit a day or so so the chlorine leaves, then put in fish. This is all very new to me! Thanks for the help!

 

[Aiken Drum]

No. The quick start stuff just contains bacteria, which it claims will seed the filtration with the microbes that are responsible for the nitrogen cycle. There might be a small amount of ammonia in there to keep things alive while its in the bottle.

These products make a lot of claims to get you to buy them. A lot of them dont do what they claim, or dont do anything useful, and in some cases are just harmful. The aquatics industry is mostly unregulated, these products arent often covered by patents etc, and they can say whatever they want in an effort to get you to buy them.

What these bottled bactetia products might do is speed up the time it takes to cycle a tank. They arent going to instantly cycle a tank, but some are better than others. And if there is no ammonia in the water, anything useful will just starve and die off. They are worth using as they may help out and shorten how long it takes to cycle a tank. But you cant rely on them to do all the work. Even the products that are considered a better bet to do something, if they arent stored and transported in temperature controlled environments, they will just die off in the bottle.

As to what youve done in the past, your tank will still cycle doing that, but its not a great environment to keep fish in. You used to stock lightly, change water regularly, and increase the number of fish gradually. Thats essentially a fish in cycle. But a lot more is undetstood about the nitrogen cycle, and nitrogen toxicity, and with better testing you can do this with much less risk to the fish than used to be the case.

If you want some advice on either a fishless or fish in cycle let me know.

 

[Andy Sager]

Ah, see, I assumed the ammonia would have been in the quick cycle bottle, seeing it's hype was "everything you need to cycle your tank!" and all that. I used to keep fish a (long long) time ago, and it was pretty much fill the aquarium, let it sit a day or so so the chlorine leaves, then put in fish. This is all very new to me! Thanks for the help!

Yeah, it's not like the old days. ( and I was there for the old days. LOL ) Nothing new is happening. We all cycled tanks back then too we just didn't call it anything other than maybe " establishing" the tank. Now, there are a lot of products on the market to help speed up the process but as Aiken said, none of it is regulated so any joker can make a product and " claim" it works. Some of the products are just better than others. And today, most places don't use plain chlorine anymore, they use Chloramine which is a chlorine-ammonia mix that doesn't dissipate like chlorine does so you have to use something to break the bond so that the chlorine dissipates and the ammonia is converted into ammonium.
Yeah, it "ain't like the old days. "