So, once the ammonia goes away within a day several times, its cycled. Got it. Nitrates will be fun to get rid of, its over 100ppm at the moment ?
Dying with Cycling here!
- Thread starter MetalRavioli
- Start date
It normally takes 6-8 weeks to totally cycle a tank from scratch.
Cycling usually starts with the ammonia, the ammonia is converted into the nitrite stage, then the last stage before its ready for fish, is the conversion from nitrite to nitrate.
Cycling usually starts with the ammonia, the ammonia is converted into the nitrite stage, then the last stage before its ready for fish, is the conversion from nitrite to nitrate.
Oh yeah. Its been a ride. Started with a somewhat cycled filter, but probably overdosed ammonia once or twice, throwing everything off.
I never add ammonia to an aquarium. I usually just add tetra safe start plus and then add fish and i have had success with that. The only other one i tried was seachems and that one didn’t work very well for me. Never tried fritz.
Did a water change, ammonia seems to be 1-3ppm. Most likely on the lower side
Metal Ravioli what is your pH. When pH starts approaching 6.0 the whole nitrification process halts. Check your pH also.
Should it be higher or lower? I believe it’s higher. I would assume it’s supposed to be higher
Yes higher. When it goes below 7.0 & approaches 6 things slow down. Someone much smarter than me explained that the nitrifiers that convert ammonia to nitrite use up calcium carbonate in the process which lowers the pH. I had this happen to me when I was cycling some 40 breeder tanks. All of a sudden everything came to a screaming halt, Ammonia levels started appearing and there was no nitrite production. My pH was 6.0. I added some Seachem Alakaline buffer and brought the pH back to 7.4 and bam the ammonia was converted to nitrite within 24 hours and the cycling progressed. Now when cycling tanks I monitor my pH. My tap water only has a kH of 3 degrees so I carefully monitor pH more closely. Once tanks are fully cycled my pH stabilizes at 7.6. But during the cycling process it is subject to some wild swings due to my lower kH which helps stabilize pH.
This is awesome. Thank you! My pH I’m guessing is very low, as it shows up as light tan in my test tube, which isn’t even on the card. How would I fix that? Is there anything I can add? Is the API pH stabilizer any good?
Seachem Alkaline Buffer. Looks like the API proper pH brings water to 7.0? I would just use the Seachem Buffer or something similar as you can adjust pH up slowly as needed.