Nitrogen cycle

[Jross8484]

Hey guys,

so I got my 10 gallon tank 5 weeks and 4 days ago for my two bettas that I had and didn’t know anything about the nitrogen cycle so I added my conditioner, divider and what not and then added my plants, 2 fish, 3 Nerite snails, 5 ghost shrimp and 2 cherry shrimp then finally started to learn about the nitrogen cycle. I immediately got schematic prime and started dosing and everything was fine. I even got fluval biological enhancer and added it as instructed.

for awhile ammonia was at .25 ppm and I got ammo lock because I thought it would be better than prime and I thought that the .25 ppm would just go to 0 but it rose anywhere between 4 and 8 ppm but I left it because it was in a “non toxic form”. when the instructed week was up it wouldn’t go back down past that. I did everything it said “water changes (fairly frequent), service filter (got a sponge filter yesterday), and reduce feeding. I went back to using schematic prime two days ago and I’ve done 2 water changes and ammonia is still sitting between 4 and 8 ppm and nitrate and nitrite are at 0.

I’m not sure what to do or what I’m doing wrong but it is starting to get very frustrating. Can anyone help?

 

[Orion0220]

I don't think you're currently doing anything wrong, you could do daily water changes and get your hands on some fritzyme 7, I've had that actually work in speeding up the colonization of beneficial bacteria. Prime is a good conditioner to neutralize the ammonia as best you can, but you still need to water change it out. some will slowly be converted to nitrite and then nitrate which will need to be water changed out anyways because those sword plants are heavy root feeders and its leaning more on the java fern and java moss to eat up all the bad stuff. Which the cant really keep up on because you have quite a bit of stock in there. Best bet, daily 50% water changes, dose prime before you refill and don't quit. Because eventually, that'll be a nice tank to sit back and enjoy.

I always like to add the disclaimer, I'm not an expert, I just do constant research on these subjects because I had the same problems with my first tank. Youtube can be a great source of info that is better explained by "professionals". Primetime aquatics, Aquarium Co-op and KG tropicals have Loads of experience and information for us. Good luck