slider6542

Please take a look at this chart and give me your opinions. It pretty much speaks for itself and allowing for human error in colour comparison, is as accurate as I can get it. The question......has the tank cycled. My BN Pleco and 6x cardinals are very happy. The Pleco has cleaned up the tank brilliantly and the Cardinals are growing like crazy and eating well.

Pleco was introduced on 1st Feb
Cardinals on 3rd Feb

Don't want to get any more just incase i get some nasty spikes

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capekate

Hi Slider,
you have a great chart there for reference. Good job keeping track...
A few observations based on the chart are:
I do not believe your tank has cycled yet. It doesnt appear to even have begun. the reason for this thought is there is no ammonia readings showing at all through out the chart. You need ammonia to start the nitrogen cycle.
I do not understand how you can have the slightest readings of nitrite on day 12 and then on day 13th have a reading of NitrIte: 0.25 and nitrate: 12.5 without ever showing any ammonia levels in your tank. I have to wonder if you are either reading the results wrong or your test product is not accurate.


~ kate

finmama

What kind of test are you using for Ammonia?

slider6542

I am using interpet easy test liquid master test kit. Though I am waiting for my API master test kit to arrive. The colour comaprisons are dificult to make though. One would think that at that price results would be exact.

capekate

One would think so... the other solution may be that you are not reading it right? Are you sure that you have not shown any ammonia yet?
This is the confusion I get when reading your chart, you really need some ammonia showing before you start seeing those other readings...

~ kate

Bibby100

Hi.

I'm new to this so sorry in advance! I hate to be annoying but what exactly is the nitrogen cycle.

Sorry. Any feed back would be much apprecated!!

Bibby100

Narcicius

Bibby just go to the main site and look it up, a detailed description is available.

Narcicius

The chart looks like it has to be wrong because if you already have fish in it and they'res zero ammonia in the water, then either your results are wrong or your fish don't poop ever.

finmama

Maybe the test kit is no good...expired or something? Do they expire??

Lucy

Hi Bibby,
This will explain it all. Good luck.
http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm

slider6542

Thanks for the comments thus far, It is very difficult to read the ammonia wrong as there are only 2 yellows and my test definately shows the lighter of the two which is 0.
Nitrite is def 0.1
The only ambigous one is nitrate which I have read as 0 but at worst, it could be 12.5,
I am doing regullar 25% water changes.
Oh boy do they poop, I hoover the tank and theres loads of the stuff.

One possibility, could I have had the ammonia spike in the days 14/1-25/1 when I didn't have the facility to test for it Don't forget, all the red readings are with test strips.

As I said, not sure if better but I am waiting for the API kit to arrive.

finmama

yes that would make sense!! those test strips are such a pain in the a** lol.
I bought them before...I wish I could get my money back...and all the time I spent trying to figure out "is it light pink or medium-light pink" ahhhhh

Bibby100

Thanks Narcicus. Will do that!

Bibby100

Drea

Yes, liquid test kits expire. I have a Tetra Master Kit. I sent/received email from their tech support explaining their codes on the bottom of the bottles. Their kits have a 6 months test life. Anyone who is getting strange or unusual readings may want to check dates, if there are codes, send an inquiry to the mfg. for an analysis.

slider6542

Assuming that the kit is in date. I know I am reading the colour charts correctly but the readings show nothing happening at all. I think the cycle must have happened in the period 14/1 - 25/1 when I couldn't test for ammonia and was using those *** test strips. I have had 7 fish in the tank since 1st Feb so I can't believe the ammonia hasn't spiked yet. the nitrite and nitrate readings on 26th may have been miss interperated... Does anyone agree that the cycle may have occcured. Readings in red were with strips, in black with interpet master test kit. Readings taken on 10/2 are exactly the same though the nitrite is definately getting paler and may be approaching zero.
My concern is the 0 reading nitrate, I should be seing something surely.

capekate

good morning
Its hard to say if you have cycled during that period of using the unreliable test strips. I just went over your chart again and my thoughts are that you have not cycled yet. The reasons being are even tho the test strips are unreliable, they should have shown you some kind of reading for ammonia, NI and NA. On day 14, using your new test kityou showed a reading of NI: 0.25, NA 12.5, this is not considered to be a spike. Usually a spike in any of the readings are in the range of higher numbers, like 40-80 in NA or 5.0 and up in NI, and a much higher reading of ammonia than your numbers are showing. Going on the assumption that your tank cycled before the use of interpet your test strips would show some coloring during a spike, and I see none of that on your chart. Also noted is your 20% water change on day 15, after showing some NI and NA, you went back to almost zero again. Its possible it caused a set back in your process, and the reason for showing such low numbers after the wc. Then you did another partial water change on day 17, again possibly slowing the process down more.
Im curious to know what your readings have been since posting that chart? I agree that with 7 fish in the tank, you should be showing some nitrates.You also should be showing ammonia. I understand the need to do the partial water changes due to the fact you are cycling with fish. It took me a little over two months for my tank to cycle when I had fish in it, due to the necessary water changes which will slow the process down.
What are your readings today? In any event.. every day brings you closer to a cycled tank! But in my opinion, your tank has not cycled yet, but I could be wrong too. Would love to know what your readings have been since posting the chart.
~ kate

Narcicius

As long as its been with fish in the water the only explanation I can come to is that your tank is in fact cycled, but it just hasn't been long enough for it to do so.
so either its not cycled and those strips are really innacurate, or you just broke the record for cycling a tank without biospira.

slider6542

Hi first of all to capekate, the strips don't give the facility for Ammonia testing, hence the lack of readings up to the 25/1. My readings today were exactly the same as day 8/2.
Thanks for payiing so much attention to my chart, I guess I will just have to sit back and wait for the cycle to take place. I would have thought there would be lots of ammonia in the tank with 7 fish. With them being Cardinals (6) and apparently quite sensitive, I hope they don't suffer any.

slider6542

Hooray, I now have my API master test kit and have taken the following readings: Ammonia - 0.25, Nitrite - 0 and Nitrate - 10.
Completely contradictory to the interpet kit. Does this throw some light on what is really going on?

Narcicius

sounds like your cycle just started, hope you can get it to cycle quickly and get some fish in there.

Angela_96

Origianally I was going to say that the nitrates had to be there, my tanks are all showing postitve at least 20ppm, and my nitrites are showing at least .5ppm, and pos ammonia even if it is low levels they are there in a cycled aquarium..... I did have a huge spike a week or so ago, but our cichlid tank is a newly set up tank... so I figure ours is cycled now... I have used a bacteria culture to hurry the cycle along and did a fishless cycle w/ it.
But I am glad you got a better test kit... I am using the strips myself, and getting a master kit this weekend, I cannot wait to accuratlly test my tanks.... I guess the good thing is I grew up always having a pool and I had to do the maintinence when I was old enough to help, so I am used to testing the water quality that way... the strips were new to me.

slider6542

i hope you are right and that the cycle has indeed started. Are those readings I stated in my previus post very significant?
To diversify slightly, my pH reading is very high at 8.4. I would bring my swimming pool PH down by adding acid and am tempted to put some in the tank but no idea how much. The tap water PH here is very high but the cardinals and pleco look happy as Larry.

Angela_96

There is correct ph chemicals that you can buy, there is also ph buddies that you can try.

Bibby100

Thanks Lucy. Should really help and will have a look when I have some spare time!

Bibby100

susitna-flower

Hi, I just wanted to weigh in on this subject to hopefully caution you BEFORE you add anything additional to your tank to bring the PH down.

Are you adding anything to your tank except something to remove the chlorine of water changes?

Did you ever add used filter material, gravel, or bio-spira to seed the bacteria cultures?

Just exactly, what do you have in your tank for substrate, plants, and decorations?

Something is causing your ph to raise....if you figure out what is causing it and correct it, that would be much better on your tank health than to start messing with chemicals to try to bring the ph down.

IF you start chemicals to bring down the ph, it will destroy the natural buffers in your tank chemistry, which hold your ph steady...this will end up with drastic swings in ph that will be extremely hard on your fish.

If you want to bring the ph down slightly in a natural way, add more driftwood as decoration, and maybe peat to the filter.

The indications from your chart would suggest that you are still in mid cycle, since you are still reading ammonia, you may have had a small mini-cycle caused by extra food, or even cleaning decorations or filter media... You can expect this to some degree long past the tank being fully cycled. A good reason to continue testing every week, the day after tank maintenance. Good Luck

slider6542

I have substrate bought in the LFS with gravel on top, the PH is naturally high here in Spain. I might take your advice on the driftwood and replace one of my artificial logs with it. Can it be bought ready to go?
Where in my internal filter would I put peat (poor guy) It has 4 'cartridges' of different materials including carbon.

susitna-flower

OK, sorry I didn't follow up, glad you contacted me.
It looks like your cycle is going in the right direction! Are you doing water changes every day? You should keep those up until the ammonia and nitrite BOTH go back down to 0. It looks to me like this could be any day now.

It would help to use driftwood, and YES you can buy it from your LFS or online. It can be expensive, and shipping costly. I have some in each of my tanks. Some plecos HAVE to have the wood in their diets...

Peat...hmmmmm, I do not really know how you would substitute one of the cartridges in your internal filter....But I can say that some of your problems could be caused with having that cartridge of carbon in your filter.. Carbon is designed to capture impurities in the water. It doesn't discriminate between what is good or bad. It just absorbs....until it can't any more, then it releases what it had stored up! flooding your tank with toxins.

The only time you should use carbon in your filter is when you have used medications in the tank. After a full round of any medication place carbon in your filter for 24 hours then discard.

If you take the carbon cartridge out, it will leave a spot for peat placed in a cartridge.....now I don't know how you are going to be able to do this, but the peat media is available in granule form from www.drsfostersmith.com I don't know if you can order it from Spain, but you can look it up to see what I am talking about.

Any time you have to change out filter material, just do one cartridge at a time, this is to preserve as much bacteria in the filter as you can...or you will be right back in a mini-cycle with readings on ammonia and nitrite.....Does this help? Feel free to ask more questions...

slider6542

Thanks susitna-flower, I may have been wrong about the carbon, I have attached a pic of my filter media (how sad is that?) I can't find any info anywhere about this biobox2 filter system. I have emailed the manufacturers aquatlantis but they aren't forethcoming with maintainance info. I have a funny feeling that the media might even be in the wrong order.
Does it mean anything to you?

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susitna-flower

Slider, did you ever tell us what size your tank is?


The filter you show looks to have a sponge on top, carbon, biomax or some other bio media, and the one on the bottom looks like maybe one like ammonia lock... Can you tell us exactly the model of filter this is...I would look it up on the Internet and see what the manufacturer says about it....

In the mean time I would say the carbon could be taken out, and place more bio media of some sort in that cartridge. Do the cartridges pop apart. Do they open up so you can just replace the contents, or do you have to buy a new cartridge?

If they don't open so you can refill, I would say the manufacturer has found a product to sell that generates $$$$$$. not one that is a good filter for your tank. BAH HUMBUG! I am so frustrated with companies like that!


The reason I ask what size tank you have is that at some point you may want to change out the filter system you have, and use a HOB filter, or one you can more easily change out media in.

The only filtration I use is floss, sponge, and bio material, unless I want to take medication out, then I will add carbon....OR in tanks where I need to bring down ph I will use peat in one layer (this is in my canister filter which is easy to just fill one of the baskets).

Canister filters have been designed to allow easy changing of media....I know there are other filters, like some HOB filters that can be modified to do the same thing....Sometimes manufacturers don't give very good directions on this because they make money by after sales of their products, but I think most here have their favorite media and will use it in a filter of a different brand!

Post back and I will follow up....

slider6542

Hi Susitna-Flower, all my tank details are on my profile. I appreciate all the time you are affording me. The manufacturers site for the biobox2 filter is http://www.aquatlantis.com/uk-frame-...?id_produto=71
As you will see, there isn't a lot of info on there.
I am very tempted to cut my losses and buy an external filter/ biowheel maybe. What do you recommend and is it easy to make the transition from one filter to another without upsetting the cycle.?