jlk said:I second Librarygirls advice! A large water change is in order then dose your amm back up to 4ppm. As she suggested, if your tank continues to have ph crashes daily, a bit of crushed coral added to your filter should help to stablize your ph. Place it in a mesh bag or a piece of panythose & place it in your filter & monitor your tanks ph closely. Its best to start with a very small amount & adjust the amount upwards until you get your desired ph (preferably whatever it was before your ph dropped). Let us know how things are going!
All test results . . .
Ph- 6.0
Ammonia- 2.0 or 4.0 ppm can't tell
Nitrite- 0 ppm
Nitrate- 40 ppm
So the nitrites are at zero, why did the ammonia not decrease at all since I dosed it back up to 4.0 ppm yesterday after the water change . . . Where an I in the cycle ? Did I start over from the beginning ? :thinking:
All test results . . .
Ph- 6.0
Ammonia- 2.0 or 4.0 ppm can't tell
Nitrite- 0 ppm
Nitrate- 40 ppm
So the nitrites are at zero, why did the ammonia not decrease at all since I dosed it back up to 4.0 ppm yesterday after the water change . . . Where an I in the cycle ? Did I start over from the beginning ? :thinking:
I agree with you, I guess that's why I don't do fishless cycling. I find fish in cycling with daily testing and daily water changes to be easier. And I've read some articles that suggest 0.5 ppm of daily ammonia is sufficint to fishless cycle.jetajockey said:Another idea is to lower your dosage of ammonia in the tank. The pH crashes are not the status quo when the tank is stocked and running, it only happens when the tank is being dosed with high amounts of ammonia right? Was the pH stable for a while in the beginning but now that lots of bacterial activity is happening it is crashing like mad?
If so, rather than have to add a buffer that may not be necessary once the tank is up and running, I'd just lower the ammonia dosage. 4ppm is a ton of ammonia for a tank to process daily, and it is way more than a normal full stock load will produce in a daily basis anyway, so it looks like many of these crashes with decently (naturally) buffered tanks are a result of unnecessarily heavy ammonia dosing.
Some might disagree, but it's just my opinion.
Mikey214 said:Just added some crushed coral , why does the water seem cloudy now ?!?! :thinking:
Mikey214 said:Just for the record it was cloudy before I added the crushed coral !
ashleynicole said:Could be a bacterial bloom.
Mikey214 said:What's a bacterial bloom?