Ammonia spike with root tabs

[Ktrk]

Hi,

I'm only 18 months in to the hobby and about 3 weeks in to the wold of live aquarium plants but I'm trying and willing to learn!

I'm in the process of doing a fishless cycle on a 30l cube, and it was going to plan (4 weeks in so far), with drift wood and anubias attached (with liquid fertilers).

It's all gone a bit wrong after I added some substrate plants (crypts and sagg)...
I've got small gravel (about 2 -3 mm diametre) and added root tabs for them yesterday evening (tropica nutrition capsules) as per the instructions on spacing etc.

I've checked my water parameters this morning and the ammonia and nitrite have both spiked, from 0.25 amm and 0.25 nitrite at time of planting, to 8ppm amm and 2 ppm nitrite tonight!!

The only variable is the root tabs, are these the culprit?! The gravel is 2 inches deep and I pushed them down to the glass at the bottom..

I've done a large water change, but where should I go from here?!
Any help appreciated, thank you

 

[ColdKoi]

Oh wow that’s an insane swing in water parameters. I can’t speak for those specific tabs but I’ve used the seachem tabs with similar substrate and haven’t had an issue.

Are there any inhabitants of the tank or just plants? Either way I’d be doing a few more water changes to get that ammonia back in check. Even if you did a 80% water change you’re still going to be 1-2ppm. Did you re-test just to make sure the reading was correct?

 

[Ktrk]

Thank you for replying so fast! ��

And yeh isn't it ��

No inhabitants at all, just plants (saving grace i guess).
I've just checked it this morning and we're at 2 ppm ammonia, 2ppm nitrite.
Do you think I should do another wc? I'm worried it's stalled my cycle after the last 4 weeks ��

Also, in your experience would you say my substrate is deep enough for root tabs? As everything I've read talks about making sure you bury them enough.

Thank you!

 

[ColdKoi]

My small tank with gravel is a little deeper at 3-4” deep, but my 75 with Flourite substrate is only 2” at the most, it’s quite shallow.

I guess one difference with the tabs you’re using, if they aren’t deep enough, once the capsule melts it does have potential to release the contents into the water column quite easily.

Ammonia that high is likely to have stalled the cycle unfortunately. With any luck it won’t be like starting over from scratch but there’s likely been a massacre on the beneficial bacteria

 

[Aiken Drum]

I have root tabs in substrate about 2 inches thick. No problems with them. I use dennerle tabs that are like clay balls and are slower release than the tropica types.

The nitrogen in root tabs should be in the form of nitrate rather than ammonia. I think the ammonia is more likely from something trapped and disturbed from you pushing the root tabs into the substrate rather than something contained in the tabs.

 

[ColdKoi]

At only 4 weeks I don’t know if there’s really going to be much in there to disturb with only plants in the tank. But who knows, it has to come from somewhere

 

[Ktrk]

Thanks guys,
Darn it, I thought as much in terms of my cycle! I was getting so close aswell..fingers crossed for some hardy survivors!

That's a consideration point about rummaging the substrate and stirring things up. If you have a more "delicate" method I'm all ears!

I guess I'll just have to ride it out and keep checking parameters closely, but it does make me concerned for when they come to need replacing...
I don't want to bin off live plants (not after 3 weeks lol), but equally the thought of this happening when eventually there's a fish in there is very scary.

I might look in to some others such as the dennerle ones.
Or might have to bite the bullet, take out the plants and add more substrate, and replant deeper down.

Thanks again

 

[ColdKoi]

How did you put them in the substrate?

I use my long tweezers and basically just ram them in there. Which doesn’t disturb too much at all, if you were digging a hole and burying it I could see that stirring things up. But again if it’s only a 4 week old tank with no fish I can’t imagine there would be much of anything tied up in the depths of the substrate.

Usually anyone that’s had issues disturbing substrate has been on well seasoned tanks where there’s been bacteria established in there and nutrients making there way down there for months/years.

 

[Ktrk]

I don't have any scaping tools specifically so I improvised and sterilised some normal tweezers to hold them and push them straight in...

Is it worth trying to take them out somehow (thinking gravel vac) then the don't keep leaching things? Or would pulling the plant out and messing with them cause more harm?

 

[ColdKoi]

The capsule should be long gone by now, there won’t be anything left to recover. Besides, stirring up the area now would surely leach some into the water column

 

[Ktrk]

OK yeh that makes sense.

I know bacteria grow to the size of the bioload, is it something that you think with time the bacteria would grow sufficiently to take care of it?
Just scared it happens again.

Forgive me if these seem like dumb questions, I'm still learning!

 

[ColdKoi]

That’s the thing, we don’t really know what caused the spike, but short answer is yes and no. Once fully cycled and seasoned the tank is much more capable of handling an increase of ammonia. But there’s still more than a couple horror stories where someone has lost a tank because of substrate disturbance. or in the case of sand type substrate it can trap gasses, that build up and eventually erupt and nuke the tank

All we can do is take precaution and try to do our best, unfortunately bad things still happen sometimes.

If you used tweezers to push them into the substrate there’s really no better way you could have done it short of placing them when the tank was assembled. The. You’d have to go back to the same method you used after a while to replenish the nutrients

 

[Ktrk]

It's a steep learning curve hey!

Whenever the tank seems to have completed its cycle, I think I'll hold off adding anything fish wise, until I've replenished the root tabs a couple of times and worked out if there's a pattern, just to be on the safe side.

Thanks for your help with this

 

[ColdKoi]

Yea doesn’t hurt to see if it’s something with those particular capsules or something in the substrate. A lot of this hobby is trial and error, what works for one doesn’t always work for someone else!