Some Questions (probably Long Winded)

Hello All

Brand new to this forum and aquariums and over my summer break I decided to try my hand at fishkeeping. So I'm trying to set up a betta tank and had quite the information overload at first realizing how terrible I was keeping fish as a kid and that there was plenty to learn!

Currently I have a Marineland portrait tank which was listed as a 5 gallon but I cannibalized the back of it so it probably holds closer to 5.5 or 6 gallons at the moment with a corner box filter from Amazon and a small air pump for filtration. Yes, I know for beginners a bigger tank would be better but this is the space I currently have (along with a growing itch for a second tank- go figure). Bought myself a bag of Fluval Stratum, I do have some seiryu stone for hardscape, and since I am not terrible at keeping plants above water I thought I'd try my hand at a planted tank (yes it's ambitious I know...). Learned all about Anacharis and how it melts in a puddle of goo when it's not happy and cleaned the little bit of that I salvaged out of the tank and plopped it in a critter keeper full of water that I'm not touching in a window with some morning sun...we'll see if that survives. Lesson learned!

But, of the plants I currently have (anubias nana petite, water wisteria, a small crypt, and some frogbit) all the rest of my plants are looking okay with a little melt here and there and some visible new growth- by the way my lighting is just the light that comes with the tank itself. The wisteria was grown submersed not immersed so it's starting to develop the more familiar looking leaves I see on all the YouTube tanks and I've been fishless cycling with ammonia drops since 6/5/19.

Here is where I'm looking for advice.

1.) Currently fishless cycling. Learned the fun way that the recommended number of drops on Dr Tim's bottle doesn't necessarily equal the number of drops I will need to get my ammonia level to 4ppm...Twenty two drops later on 6/6 I was closer to 8ppm ammonia, 0.25 ppm nitrite, and 5ppm nitrate and freaked out. This was where my anacharis started to really melt and look unhappy (I had the tank set up since 6/3/19) and I did a 50% water change and took out the goo leaving the green bits to float. I think this is also the point where I stalled my cycle.

From there I went back down to 1-2ppm ammonia, the nitrates went back down to zero on 6/9, I did another large water change and started using Stability and Prime after reading some online articles and thinking I could buy some beneficial bacteria like TSS which everyone seemed to approve of and add my fish in sooner. Well that didn't really happen either because in the end I felt it wasn't worth it...added TSS on 6/12 with the ammonia at 1ppm, nitrites at zero, and nitrate at 5ppm and didn't see much of a change either- my numbers have been ringing in at ammonia between 1-2 ppm, no nitrites, and nitrates at 5ppm since then (I also completed 7 days of Stability).

It was at this point I wondered if I had even begun cycling my tank at all and after completely removing any of the dreaded anacharis leaves and giving my stratum a little vacuum I have pretty much started over. On 6/16 I added the CORRECT number of ammonia drops (5 for me) to get my ammonia up to 4ppm and as of today (6/20) this is what I currently have:

ph 6.8-7.0 (this has stayed solid as a rock the entire time)
Ammonia 2ppm
Nitrite (still less than 0.25 but not zero, where have you gone oh nitrites- did I off you with TSS?)
Nitrate 10ppm

My tap water has a teeny bit of ammonia at 0.25 and nitrates as well at 5ppm. So...do I wait until the ammonia drops back to close to zero? (which I have never seen in this tank...unclear if this is r/t dead plant matter or what) Dose it back up to 4ppm? Or should I wait until my nitrates climb more? (This is the first day I have seen them definitely above 5ppm).

2.) Somewhat of a less important question is... my little bag of stratum has now settled and I have some really weird gaps in my tank like a hole under my filter where the corner is just hanging in nothing but water. I tried to solve this solution by buying a small bag of gravel, rising it, and tucking it up under the hole but it doesn't...look right at the moment because the gravel is the wrong color. Since I added in such a tiny amount I bought a small bag of sand thinking "well maybe I can throw the sand down first, put the stratum back on top of that, and rescape just this ONE time..." but I also don't want to crash my cycle again. And this is probably what's going to happen right? Somebody talk me down from a ledge! Haha

If you've gotten to the end of this just know I appreciate you and will take any and all input. Less is more I know, I just have to combat that though with learning all these new things...

Cheers!
Tikka

 

Patience is the key to this hobby. For comparison's sake, I started fishless cycling on 31 May using pure ammonia. I also am using Fluval Stratum in that tank. I was going to use only ammonia, but I got impatient and added some Tetra Safe Start on 4 June. After using the TSS, a bunch of unexpected nitrAtes turned up before any ammonia had been converted, but I've simply stayed the course.

As of 19 June the ammonia and nitrItes were gone. The nitrItes disappeared literally overnight after staying very high for ages. I only redosed ammonia once before yesterday, on 13 June, when the ammonia level dropped to .50ppm-. I dosed back to 4ppm then, and again last night when it dropped again. This morning the ammonia was gone again. Today I did a 50% water change and redosed ammonia to 4ppm.

The Stratum has driven my pH all the way down to 6 or possibly below (since the test kit stops at 6). This slowed my cycle but clearly didn't stall it. It might take more than 24 hours for the ammonia to clear this time due to the low pH plus the water change, but I'm happy to take my sweet time since no fish or inverts are being harmed during this experiment.

In answer to your question, I redose ammonia as soon as it drops below 0.5ppm and simply observe everything else (or I did until today). I'm pretty sure I'm within days of success but I won't move my shrimp and snails into the tank until I'm sure.

You won't crash your cycle by adding to the substrate, but Fluval recommend not mixing it- from my experience I would have to agree with Fluval on this as it's so messy anyway. You've already added gravel but I'd recommend you don't add sand as well- just get a small bag of Stratum and add that instead.

 

Patience is the key to this hobby. For comparison's sake, I started fishless cycling on 31 May using pure ammonia. I also am using Fluval Stratum in that tank. I was going to use only ammonia, but I got impatient and added some Tetra Safe Start on 4 June. After using the TSS, a bunch of unexpected nitrAtes turned up before any ammonia had been converted, but I've simply stayed the course.

As of 19 June the ammonia and nitrItes were gone. The nitrItes disappeared literally overnight after staying very high for ages. I only redosed ammonia once before yesterday, on 13 June, when the ammonia level dropped to .50ppm-. I dosed back to 4ppm then, and again last night when it dropped again. This morning the ammonia was gone again. Today I did a 50% water change and redosed ammonia to 4ppm.

The Stratum has driven my pH all the way down to 6 or possibly below (since the test kit stops at 6). This slowed my cycle but clearly didn't stall it. It might take more than 24 hours for the ammonia to clear this time due to the low pH plus the water change, but I'm happy to take my sweet time since no fish or inverts are being harmed during this experiment.

In answer to your question, I redose ammonia as soon as it drops below 0.5ppm and simply observe everything else (or I did until today). I'm pretty sure I'm within days of success but I won't move my shrimp and snails into the tank until I'm sure.

You won't crash your cycle by adding to the substrate, but Fluval recommend not mixing it- from my experience I would have to agree with Fluval on this as it's so messy anyway. You've already added gravel but I'd recommend you don't add sand as well- just get a small bag of Stratum and add that instead.

Thanks for your reply

Yeah my tap water comes out at a pH of close to 8 so I figured the stratum wasn't a total bust of an idea. Particularly since I've read seiryu stone can raise your pH as well. I'm honestly surprised my pH has stayed as steady as it has but I figure be thankful for the small stuff.

 

As I said, I had what most people would regard as a "pH crash" due to the Stratum (it's 7.2 out of the tap, but very soft), and it has not stalled my cycle. The tank cleared the ammonia I added yesterday overnight, so I'll be stocking it quite soon. I'm wanting to keep Crystal Red Shrimp which require low pH and soft water anyway.

I hope the answer above answered your questions, as I was hoping it'd be helpful to you beyond the effect on pH, which isn't what you were asking about about in the first place. If not, please let me know if I can clarify.

 

No worries, you answered my questions. While I have not seen my ammonia drop below 1 in the entirety of the time I've had the tank and my tap water does come out with a little ammonia I will continue to wait to see if the ammonia level drops below 2ppm and go from there. Thanks again.

 

I think that dosing to 8ppm would have slowed the start of your cycle, so possibly you should consider your first day to be 9 June? That would mean you've only really been going
for two weeks, which is not long at all.

I think that adding TSS to my tank was a good move and not pointless- but this is my first time doing a fishless cycle so I can't say for certain that it definitely speeds things up as against not using it.