snafusnake
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2019
- Messages
- 11
I have had a hell of a time with this tank. It took about 3 months to get it cycled. All sorts of weird stalling issues that nobody can seem to figure out. Finally, it started to act normally and finished cycling about two weeks after I added a 10 oz bottle of nitrifying bacteria. Two days later, (yesterday) I check the levels and I have .50 ppm ammonia and nitrate at 5 ppm. Nitrite is still at 0. I watched it take care of 1 ppm of ammonia per day during the time the cycling was finishing up.
Tank details:
8.5 gallon Fluval Vista tank with Aquaclear 20 filter.
I use cnodes, sponge, and some purigen in the filter
Aqueon water conditioner.
Using API kit to test plus Tetra easy strips
Just have some black sand and fake plants in the tank
1 male betta fish only
I feed him pellets and dried blood worms
Realized that the sponge was quite dirty, which must have just been from the shrimp that I put in the tank to start the cycle. It was a fishless one. So I rinsed that in tank water yesterday, change out a little bit of water, probably 15-20%. Checked levels again today and they are the same. I don't know why it cycled but now can't take care of that bit of ammonia. I made sure ammonia and nitrates were at 0 before I put my fish in. Does anyone have any ideas of what could be going on?
Tank details:
8.5 gallon Fluval Vista tank with Aquaclear 20 filter.
I use cnodes, sponge, and some purigen in the filter
Aqueon water conditioner.
Using API kit to test plus Tetra easy strips
Just have some black sand and fake plants in the tank
1 male betta fish only
I feed him pellets and dried blood worms
Realized that the sponge was quite dirty, which must have just been from the shrimp that I put in the tank to start the cycle. It was a fishless one. So I rinsed that in tank water yesterday, change out a little bit of water, probably 15-20%. Checked levels again today and they are the same. I don't know why it cycled but now can't take care of that bit of ammonia. I made sure ammonia and nitrates were at 0 before I put my fish in. Does anyone have any ideas of what could be going on?
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