Can’t Get My Tank To Cycle

I have a koi pond so I’m not new to the cycle thing, but I am having the craziest time trying to cycle my tank. It’s been up for a month already 38 gallon and won’t cycle . I have used 2 bottles of tetra safe start , 2 bottles of seachem stability , now I am trying apI quickstart. I’m getting seriously frustrated .

During this time I have used prime to protect the fish , Have only lost a molly and female Betta but they were from petsmart and probably not healthy to begin with .
My ammonia has been at 2-3 ppm
I have 2 juvenile white angelfish
4 cherry barbs
1 gold ram
1 blue dwarf gourami
.
It’s a marine land 38 gallon bow front kit I have got from pets mart and just using the filter and heater it came with .

 

That's high ammonia...hm

 

What's your nitrite and nitrate at? And what are the water parameters of the water you're doing water changes with?

IMO, never buy petsmart fish. They're in horrible heath. The store has dead fish in every tank, employees don't know what they're doing, etc. Petco on the other hand has healthy fish, but Petsmart doesn't.

I was there last night looking at tanks and 2 of the 4 the bloodfin tetras there had mouth rot and there was a bunch of dead fish in their tanks. It was actually pretty sad.

 

Agreed with the above poster about PetSmart fish. You put your whole tank at risk every time you add fish from there. I haven't had a healthy batch of fish from PetSmart, ever. My local Petco does well, though. I know, that varies from location to location. But the longer you are in this hobby, the more you become put-off by PetSmart. They're everything wrong with the fishkeeping hobby. I'm straight up boycotting them indefinitely at this point.

Since you have a pond, you could try stealing some filter media from the pond to jump start your tank. Your pond has a filtration system, right? What's it use, bio balls? Steal some of the bio balls from your pond and put them in your tank's filter and see if that helps.

 

My koi pond is using. A box filter with hard mesh material. I’m not sure how I’d transfer it into the filter on my aquarium . It’s just A hang on the glass type . The tap water is either .25 or 0 ppm ammonia

I have bad eyes .


Ph looks like 6.5 and nitrate 0ppm

I meant nitrite ** my kit doesn’t have nitrate for some reason

 

My koi pond is using. A box filter with hard mesh material. I’m not sure how I’d transfer it into the filter on my aquarium

OOooooooh ok. Yeah you probably can't, then.

 

I buy 98% of my fish from LFS here in Arizona we have like 6-7 of them in a 30 mile radius, but I have a 8 inch Tiger Oscar and a 8 inch Blood Parrot and a 6 inch Bichir from petsmart who are all healthy and thriving. Like any fish, you should quarintine them, petsmart fish while can be sick a lot of fish at LFS are also sick too. You have to quarantine new fish, regardless of where you buy them... buy a 10 gallon tank stick a sponge filter in there and medicate their food and water for 2 weeks and they’ll be fine.

 

I am confused , some of the replies are about petsmart , but nothing is wrong with my fish . My question was about ammonia and cycling . The only one from there is the dwarf gourami and he’s in great shape . He’s healed and such since. The others are from my local fish store and it is reputable so I’ve heard . I’ve even used Paraguard to knock out anything that might have been on them
My issue is with ammonia and cycling ...

 

Sorry. We tend to get off topic sometimes.

Do you happen to have any friends or family members who have fish tanks that might be able to give you some pre-cycled filter media? You can use that to jump start your cycle.

 

That low PH could very well be why this tank won't cycle.From all I have read it seems a low PH can turn ammonia into ammonium and ammonium doesn't make good food for the bacteria you are trying to grow. All the bacteria you have added has starved and died.

If your PH has always been that low it could very well explain why none of the bottled bacteria you have used worked to cycle your tank. Is your source water overly soft? I know mine is so I keep crushed coral, cuttlebone (in my filters) and seashells in my tank to raise the kh/gh of my water. As they very slowly dissolve they harden the water thus keeps my PH up to 7.2. Without it my PH drops well below 7.

 

Ok that is interesting I didn’t know that . And according to websites if I use baking soda to make it higher the fish might die .... I have called my LFS and they said for me to bring in my water and they’d help tomorrow . I live in Georgia . She said they’ve been having a lot of tanks too acidic causing the bacteria to die .. perhaps this is what is going on with my low PH?

 

Where in Georgia? I am using Dekalb County water and my pH is usually in the low-mid 6’s. I’ve ordered crushed coral to bring that up a bit.

 

Ok that is interesting I didn’t know that . And according to websites if I use baking soda to make it higher the fish might die .... I have called my LFS and they said for me to bring in my water and they’d help tomorrow . I live in Georgia . She said they’ve been having a lot of tanks too acidic causing the bacteria to die .. perhaps this is what is going on with my low PH?

Hopefully you will find this is your problem because it can be fixed and you can finally get this tank cycled.

Right, you don't want big PH swings but the fish can acclimate to slowly raising it. Once stable at above 7 your cycle should get back on track.

 

Where in Georgia? I am using Dekalb County water and my pH is usually in the low-mid 6’s. I’ve ordered crushed coral to bring that up a bit.

North Georgia . Yes mine is at 6.5
Where do you put the crushed coral ?

 

North Georgia . Yes mine is at 6.5
Where do you put the crushed coral ?

I have it in my 5.5 and 10 gallon just laying on top of the sponge filters. I have both it and a piece of cuttlebone in the HOB filters on my 55 gallon. I also have seashells in all 3 tanks.

 

Do the natural seashells also make ph higher too??

 

Do the natural seashells also make ph higher too??

Yes they do. They help add hardness to the water and that harder water helps keep the PH up some and stable. They dissolve very slowly so eventually they have to be replaced.

 

Put it in a mesh bag and put it in so that you can remove if you want your PH to go back down later.

 

You can put crushed coral into a media bag are stuff it into your filter box, if you have room. If not you can just place the media bag of crushed coral right in the tank. And if you don't like the way that looks, you can just sprinkle it in with your gravel.

The amount you'll need is a trial and error process. I would say start with 1/2 cup, wait 24 hours, test your pH, if still to low, put maybe another 1/4 cup in, wait 24 hours test...repeat as necessary. The only bad thing is that crushed coral is used for a substrate in salt water tanks, so usually you're stuck buying a 15 pound bag of it. Buy hey...you'll have a lifetime supply of it.

 

I made the mistake of buying everything, including fish, and I ended up needing to learn ALOT over night. Fast forward, have my tank cycled, fish survived, and now I have a crack growing in my tank. Speedy purchase of a new and much bigger tank later, I only end up having 48 hours to run new tank before current tank starts cracking more. So now my fish that survived a fish in cycle, go into a new fish in cycle....(went from 5 gallon to 20 gallon for reference)
New tank won't cycle. I did not realize till it was too late that my new filter came with an ammonia filter and I put it in the cartridge without reading what it was. The little filter did so well at removing ammonia that it couldn't grow bb. My fish stressed out to no return. Maybe it's the same situation? I'm not seeing anything about your filter.

 

I made the mistake of buying everything, including fish, and I ended up needing to learn ALOT over night. Fast forward, have my tank cycled, fish survived, and now I have a crack growing in my tank. Speedy purchase of a new and much bigger tank later, I only end up having 48 hours to run new tank before current tank starts cracking more. So now my fish that survived a fish in cycle, go into a new fish in cycle....(went from 5 gallon to 20 gallon for reference)
New tank won't cycle. I did not realize till it was too late that my new filter came with an ammonia filter and I put it in the cartridge without reading what it was. The little filter did so well at removing ammonia that it couldn't grow bb. My fish stressed out to no return. Maybe it's the same situation? I'm not seeing anything about your filter.

For future reference since apparently is is too late this time. Had you moved everything including the water and fish over to the new tank from the cycled tank you should have had an almost instant cycle in the new tank. Once one has a cycled tank a little pre-planning and one can instantly cycle more tanks.

 

For future reference since apparently is is too late this time. Had you moved everything including the water and fish over to the new tank from the cycled tank you should have had an almost instant cycle in the new tank. Once one has a cycled tank a little pre-planning and one can instantly cycle more tanks.

I hoped that would have been the case. I figured I would have a small cycle seeing as I went from 5 gallon to 20g. Just nothing happened at all. I transferred everything but the filter. (It was cheap and the cartridge fell apart...it's a brand I hadn't heard of before and ppl look at me weird when I mention it. called Interpet) the fish lasted 2 weeks in my tank and I had no readings for anything. As soon as I took the ammonia filter part out, it started to cycle and I started getting readings. I still don't know how all that worked and when I asked on here why that might have happened, no one really had an idea. But my new tank is all cycled and ready for fish I just thought I'd throw this little tidbit in there bc maybe it's the same freak thing that happened to me.