Can't get cycle back in order

[Nikkosan]

I've been fighting with my tank parameters for about a month now. I've had my 50 gallon heavily planted tank established for about a year with no issues. However a month ago we had a power outage that caused all of my rummy nose tetras to die. I was able to save all of the other fish in the tank through a large water change and stress coat. A day after the outage my nitrites had jumped all the way to 5.0ppm with no change in ammonia. After the water change I was able to get nitrite back down to .25ppm and that's where it's been stuck for the last month. My ammonia has also been reading at 4.0ppm consistently however considering my fish have been acting completely normal I figured the test is measuring ammonium instead of ammonia. I'm just not sure what's going on with my tank! The ammonia has been at 4.0ppm and nitrite at .25ppm for the last month but all of the fish in the tank seem happy and healthy and they're always very interested in eating. Also last night I did a small water change and added some beneficial bacteria and this morning my nitrites jumped up again. I figure my tank is re establishing the nitrogen cycle but I've never had this happen before!

Tank parameters
50 gallon
Heavily planted with CO2
2 juvenile angel fish
10kuhli loaches

Ammonia: 4.0ppm
Nitrite: stuck at .25ppm but at about 1.0ppm as of this morning
Nitrate:10-20ppm
pH:7.4
Water temp: 78°
Substrate: fluval stratum and white sand

Any help or advice would be appreciated!

 

[Aiken Drum]

Ammonia as high as 4ppm could be killing the microbes you are trying to grow. You need to be more aggressive with your water changes and keep it around the 0.5ppm area.

Are you saying that a water change doesnt bring the ammonia down at all, or that it just goes back up again after the water change?

At your pH and temperature, 4ppm free ammonia is going to be very high and causing long term health issues with the fish too. You might not be seeing it, but its happening. I would consider using prime as your water conditioner to detoxify some of the ammonia too. Im not a fan of stresscoat, the aloe vera additive causes a reaction to produce slimecoat by irritating the fish. The aloe vera also coats gills and makes them less efficient. Its also stupidly expensive for dubious benefits. Works fine as a water conditioner though, but the additive is just something they add to get people to buy it over other products, with no benefits and can actually harm your fish.

 

[Nikkosan]

Ammonia as high as 4ppm could be killing the microbes you are trying to grow. You need to be more aggressive with your water changes and keep it around the 0.5ppm area.

Are you saying that a water change doesnt bring the ammonia down at all, or that it just goes back up again after the water change?

At your pH and temperature, 4ppm free ammonia is going to be very high and causing long term health issues with the fish too. You might not be seeing it, but its happening. I would consider using prime as your water conditioner to detoxify some of the ammonia too. Im not a fan of stresscoat, the aloe vera additive causes a reaction to produce slimecoat by irritating the fish. The aloe vera also coats gills and makes them less efficient. Its also stupidly expensive for dubious benefits. Works fine as a water conditioner though, but the additive is just something they add to get people to buy it over other products, with no benefits and can actually harm your fish.

It's been stuck at 4.0ppm not moving at all after water changes. I have been dosing with prime and even dosed some on Wednesday when I did my water change. I make sure to vacuum up any uneaten food and there's no decaying plants or fish either so I don't know why it won't go down at all

 

[Aiken Drum]

Test your tapwater for ammonia. Do you know if your water is treated with chlorine or chloramine?

If your tap water is zero ammonia, and your tank water is 4ppm, a 50% water change will bring it down to 2ppm immediately after the water change. Do 2 or 3 50% water changes over the course of a day, see if that brings it down.

If it doesnt bring it down i would get a 2nd opinion on your water testing. Try a fish store, see if they can test for ammonia in your tap water, from your tank before 50% water change, and from your tank immediately after a water change.

Its possible your stratum substrate is releasing ammonia as well as what your fish are producing, but i wouldnt expect it to raise instantly after a water change.

 

[Nikkosan]

Test your tapwater for ammonia. Do you know if your water is treated with chlorine or chloramine?

If your tap water is zero ammonia, and your tank water is 4ppm, a 50% water change will bring it down to 2ppm immediately after the water change. Do 2 or 3 50% water changes over the course of a day, see if that brings it down.

If it doesnt bring it down i would get a 2nd opinion on your water testing. Try a fish store, see if they can test for ammonia in your tap water, from your tank before 50% water change, and from your tank immediately after a water change.

Its possible your stratum substrate is releasing ammonia as well as what your fish are producing, but i wouldnt expect it to raise instantly after a water change.

I've had my tap water tested due to this being an issue for the last month and it's nothing there. Out of curiosity I tested right after a large water change last night and there was no change in the ammonia reading so I don't know what's going on. My 10 gallon tank has been testing fine and I have no issues there so I really don't understand why I can't lower the ammonia or nitrite

 

[Aiken Drum]

How big was your water change?

Lets say it was 50%. That would mean 4ppm would drop to 2ppm. The test really isnt accurate enough to differentiate between 2ppm and 4ppm. They would look pretty much the same and as you arent cycled, the following day you will be back up to 4ppm.

As said you need to be much more aggressive with your water changes. From 4ppm you need to be doing 4 x 50% back to back water changes to get the water where you need it to be. At 4ppm, the ammonia will be killing those microbes you are trying to grow and your tank wont cycle.

 

[Nikkosan]

How big was your water change?

Lets say it was 50%. That would mean 4ppm would drop to 2ppm. The test really isnt accurate enough to differentiate between 2ppm and 4ppm. They would look pretty much the same and as you arent cycled, the following day you will be back up to 4ppm.

As said you need to be much more aggressive with your water changes. From 4ppm you need to be doing 4 x 50% back to back water changes to get the water where you need it to be. At 4ppm, the ammonia will be killing those microbes you are trying to grow and your tank wont cycle.

So multiple water changes in a day? I'll try that when I get home and hopefully it'll help. This tank has been running just fine for the past year that power outage really threw everything out of whack and I havent been able to gain control since. I just don't know what caused this ammonia spike as when I got that huge nitrite spike the ammonia stayed at 0 until 2 days later when the nitrite dropped to .25ppm and the ammonia jumped to 4.0ppm

 

[Aiken Drum]

Yes. Multiple water changes in a day. Thats normal when you have a lot of fish in an uncycled tank. 1 water change in a day isnt going to suffice when a tank full of fish is producing more ammonia than a single water change is removing. And your substrate will be leeching ammonia into the water too, so thats an extra load on the water parameters.

Also be aware that the test kits arent laboratory testing. They are home test kits. They arent all that accurate, all sorts of things can cause false positives, or false negatives. Many of them don't even test for what it says on the bottle. In reality the numbers are meaningless, all you can really say high or low, and if you are able to compare 2 tests side by side, you can see which is higher. Diffentiating between 2ppm and 4ppm unless you can see them both side by side is practically impossible with these aquarium test kits.

If you are genuinely seeing no difference in test results immediately before and after a big water change thats puzzling, because mixing 50% 4ppm water with 50% 0ppm will result in 2ppm water. If there is something leeching ammonia it would gradually increase not suddenly jump up.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Just a query, probably not related to your issue.

From your other thread you are injecting CO2. Your pH is 7.5. Injected CO2 should be dropping the pH by 1 whole point. Are you sure your CO2 is working properly? Whats the difference in pH between the daytime when the CO2 is running, and night when its not?

 

[Nikkosan]

Yes. Multiple water changes in a day. Thats normal when you have a lot of fish in an uncycled tank. 1 water change in a day isnt going to suffice when a tank full of fish is producing more ammonia than a single water change is removing. And your substrate will be leeching ammonia into the water too, so thats an extra load on the water parameters.

Also be aware that the test kits arent laboratory testing. They are home test kits. They arent all that accurate, all sorts of things can cause false positives, or false negatives. Many of them don't even test for what it says on the bottle. In reality the numbers are meaningless, all you can really say high or low, and if you are able to compare 2 tests side by side, you can see which is higher. Diffentiating between 2ppm and 4ppm unless you can see them both side by side is practically impossible with these aquarium test kits.

If you are genuinely seeing no difference in test results immediately before and after a big water change thats puzzling, because mixing 50% 4ppm water with 50% 0ppm will result in 2ppm water. If there is something leeching ammonia it would gradually increase not suddenly jump up.

How big of a gap should there be between these changes? And should I be dosing with prime when I do them? It's just such a strange situation because my other tanks are coming up normal. I have to assume when I had that overnight power outage it crashed my cycle?

 

[Nikkosan]

Just a query, probably not related to your issue.

From your other thread you are injecting CO2. Your pH is 7.5. Injected CO2 should be dropping the pH by 1 whole point. Are you sure your CO2 is working properly? Whats the difference in pH between the daytime when the CO2 is running, and night when its not?

The CO2 drops my pH pretty low so I use an alkaline buffer to raise it. I've been using this alkaline buffer every now and then since establishing the tank so I never really thought it was an issue as it's never caused any problems before

 

[Aiken Drum]

Injected CO2 doesnt deplete alkalinity. If your water has sufficient alkalinity anyway, adding a buffer just adds more. pH swings due to varying levels of CO2 arent a problem. pH swings due to low alkalinity would be.

Im not really the right person to explain this, but due to the relationship between CO2, alkalinity and pH, raising CO2 will lower pH but raise alkalinity. And then you are adding an alkalinity buffer on top of that.

Probably not related to your cycling issue though. Might have something to do with your power cut/ fish deaths though. The powercut would have stopped your filtration and any airstones, CO2 wouldnt have offgassed the same, pH would have dropped, alkalinity raised and you are already buffering the water. Might be why only one species died as they were less tolerant of the change in water parameter.

 

[Nikkosan]

Injected CO2 doesnt deplete alkalinity. If your water has sufficient alkalinity anyway, adding a buffer just adds more. pH swings due to varying levels of CO2 arent a problem. pH swings due to low alkalinity would be.

Im not really the right person to explain this, but due to the relationship between CO2, alkalinity and pH, raising CO2 will lower pH but raise alkalinity. And then you are adding an alkalinity buffer on top of that.

Probably not related to your cycling issue though. Might have something to do with your power cut/ fish deaths though. The powercut would have stopped your filtration and any airstones, CO2 wouldnt have offgassed the same, pH would have dropped, alkalinity raised and you are already buffering the water. Might be why only one species died as they were less tolerant of the change in water parameter.

I figured it wouldn't cause an issue to the cycling I was using it when establishing the tank because I couldn't get it to initially cycle due to extremely low pH. I don't use it very often but after the outage I had a HUGE pH dip usually it's pretty consistent at 7.4 before that. I have to assume that the outage crashed my cycle? And when I do these 50% changes how long of a gap should there be

 

[Aiken Drum]

pH swings arent a problem. Its what causes the pH swing that is. Fish live with big pH swings in the wild. Swings are common between daytime and nighttime due to varying CO2 levels the same as an aquarium with injected CO2 has a swing between day and night because you dont run the CO2 at night.

If the pH swing is caused by a sudden change in dissolved solids thats a hazard. But its not the pH that causes the hazard, its the change in dissolved solids.

I did 2 back to back 50% water changes yesterday and did them about 30 minutes apart. Not a problem. But im not buffering the water and the water going in is pretty much the same as the water coming out. If you are concerned leave a couple of hours between the water changes, and do smaller water changes but more of them.

 

[Nikkosan]

pH swings arent a problem. Its what causes the pH swing that is. Fish live with big pH swings in the wild. Swings are common between daytime and nighttime due to varying CO2 levels the same as an aquarium with injected CO2 has a swing between day and night because you dont run the CO2 at night.

If the pH swing is caused by a sudden change in dissolved solids thats a hazard. But its not the pH that causes the hazard, its the change in dissolved solids.

I did 2 back to back 50% water changes yesterday and did them about 30 minutes apart. Not a problem. But im not buffering the water and the water going in is pretty much the same as the water coming out. If you are concerned leave a couple of hours between the water changes, and do smaller water changes but more of them.

And should I be dosing these changes with prime? Or just a regular water conditioner?

 

[Aiken Drum]

Prime is pretty much the cheapest water conditioner on the market. I only know of 1 cheaper. If prime isn't your regular water conditioner, you can save a ton on money by making it your regular water conditioner.

From another recent thread.

Here's some valuable advice to save you some money. Instead of tetra aquasafe for your water conditioner, get seachem prime or api aqua essential.

500ml of aquasafe is around £12. It will treat 1000 litres of tapwater, so £1.20 per 100 litres of water treated.

500ml of prime is around £21. It will treat 20000 litres of tapwater, so £0.10 per 100 litres of water treated.

473 ml of aqua essential is around £12. It will treat 18000 litres of tapwater, so £0.07 per 100 litres of water treated.

Both prime and aqua essential are far better products than aquasafe as well.

Those arent typos, thats £1.20 compared to 10p and 7p for a 100 litre water change.

If you know of a cheaper water conditioner than above, let me know.

But if you are bringing the ammonia down to safe levels any water conditioner will do.

 

[Nikkosan]

Prime is pretty much the cheapest water conditioner on the market. I only know of 1 cheaper. If prime isn't your regular water conditioner, you can save a ton on money by making it your regular water conditioner.

From another recent thread.



If you know of a cheaper water conditioner than above, let me know.

But if you are bringing the ammonia down to safe levels any water conditioner will do.

I have both prime and an API water conditioner I just want sure which to use for such large water changes

 

[Aiken Drum]

I think if you work out the cost of those 2, they are about the same. Aqua essential and prime are better products though. May as well use up the tap water conditioner, but long term prime or aqua essential all the way. Id use the prime while you arent cycled.

Size of water change is irrelevant.

 

[Nikkosan]

I think if you work out the cost of those 2, they are about the same. Aqua essential and prime are better products though. May as well use up the tap water conditioner, but long term prime or aqua essential all the way. Id use the prime while you arent cycled.

Size of water change is irrelevant.

Ok so just start doing multiple 50% changes to see if the ammonia drops? That will also drop the nitrite as well right?

 

[Aiken Drum]

If your water is free of nitrite a 50% water change will cut nitrite by 50%.