Tank not cycling after 5 weeks

Hi Guys

I cannot get my new tank to start to cycle.
I've got a 70l tank and I set it up about 5 weeks ago, I started adding fish food and adding aqi quick start and have been testing every day, the ammonia has risen to to 5ppm and has just stayed there since, no nitrites and nitrates have ever came up on a test. I started using seachem stabilty 7 days ago and still nothing, pH is at 7.0 and water temperature is at 24 degrees but for some reason the tank wont start to cycle, please help

 

I believe you should have a filter with some media inside right? Which test kit you are using? Do you clean your tank before and during the cycling process? And from what you said, this is a fishless cycle which I should say, the first few days up to a week doesn't count as the fish food will take time to decompose and add Ammonia to the tank. However, even after 3-4 weeks later it is really strange to see no Nitrite at all.

At this point there are a few thing I would suggest:
- Try another test kit. Liquid test kit like API master test kit is more realiable comparing to strip test. If you are already using liquid test kit, maybe bring some of your water to test at LFS or borrow from someone near you to see if you had a defective kit. And I won't bother to test Nitrate until Nitrite starting to show up. According to my experience and various sources, you should see at least one or two Nitrite spike during the cycling process and only at that time I will do the test for Nitrate. Since there is no fish inside, you don't have to worry about any casualty.
- Add some more media into your cycle. Maybe more bio ring, sponge, substrate, etc. Those bacteria need surface to stick on and maybe you have too little? It will be great if you could borrow/steal some used media from friend/store to kick start your cycle.
- Try to find pure Ammonia instead of fish food? I heard it might be hard to find in some places, but IMO real Ammonia is always better than using fish food.
- Add a heater to the tank? A raise in temperature might help a little bit.

Other than that, I can't really tell the reason why and we will have to wait for other veterans' opinions on Fishlore

Good luck with your cycle Jayden!

 

5ppm might be too high, causing the stall. That's an awful lot of "food" when you have no bacteria to eat it. Try doing a water change or two and get it down to 2ppm or so. Don't add more food until it drops to zero.

What filter are you using? Better to seed it with some beneficial bacteria from a cycled tank if you can.

 

Is this tap water? What's KH of the water?

 

My experiences with fish food cycles and no animal involved.
1. the food has to start breaking down to release ammonia, all the bacterial booster in the world won't help that go any faster. and it's going to be a trickle of ammonia for the first couple weeks.
2. after about 30 days the first food added is fully breaking down, and the ammonia is building up, with each passing day for the new food since the food added on day 1, it takes 30 days for waste to decompose completely.
3. for this reason, when using food, you are building decomposers to convert the waste (food) into ammonia before you can build ammoniafiers to deal with the ammonia. the decomposers can lead to a bacterial bloom or "white cloudy water" and diatom bloom "yellow cloudy water". diatoms or decomposing bacteria, either way, that's two groups producing ammonia. and after about 30 days, there's strong production of it.
4. SO, at this point, you would see 5ppm ammonia and wondering where the heck it's all coming from. Well, it's a coming from the full breakdown of the food used, and it's comong from the breakdown of diatoms and decay bacteria die offs. both of wich your nitrifying bacteria (ammoniafiers) aren't prepared for.

for this reason, you would need to water change the ammonia levels down to a more manageable level, lets say 1ppm-2ppm ammonia to see the activity, there's too much ammonia currently and it's burying your ammoniafiers in it. the ammonia level will still likely rise off of what the tank is producing. but now your nitrifying bacteria stands a fighting chance at handling it.

Your water may or may not be really cloudy, it would depend on what level this bloom is at, and if they are reaching a critical mass population or not, it might just be nearing milk, or a slight haze to the water, or it can be an oily looking film on the glass that blurs the view into thew tank and that film would be settled on everything, and wont' really appear suspended until the water is really turned up and over kicking it up.

It's not that your cycle stalled or stopped necessarily, the pH is good the temp is good. it's all good. what has happened is with food cycling it takes weeks to a month longer to begin with, and then you can get into a position where the diatoms and decay bacteria is currently top dog in the tank, outcompeting other bacteria for space, and they need a die off or a reduction in numbers so the nitrifiers can establish. in a nutshell the decayers are outperforming the ammonifiers.

A)this can work out on it's own with another let's say 5 weeks of cycling, give or take (it should move really quick once the "bloom" dies, and hits critical mass and dies off opening up space for the slower reproducing nitrifiers to really get rolling on reproduction)
or
B) you can try to water change/clean you way out of it, removing some of the food for the decayers and some of them also, so the nitrifying bacteria has some room to grow and handle what's left of the ammonia that has been created by them, this might get you down to 2-3 weeks from this point.
you'd want to bring the ammonia level down to 1 or 2ppm maximum. enough for the nitrifiers still, but cut way back on the food waste for the decomposers to get them to die off to reasonable numbers.

Cycling with food and no animal is just the slowest way to do it, the food has to break down to ammonia before it can be worked on by the nitrifiers, and by the time that happens the decayers are well established and using up a lot of the free space. food cycling with 1 small fish per 10 gallons of water or "fish in cycling" is fast because the fish breaks down and produces ammonia and introduces all of the bacteria, but it's more hazardous for the safety of the fish than fishless cycling.
You don't have control over the ammonia production, the decayers are doing it.
You can only control the decayers through lowering their population by starving them, or through removal of them and the resource they are using to reduce their numbers. but not so well there is no ammonia production, just well enough so that they are in "control" and not reproducing like crazy.

One thing to note, the diatoms or decay bacteria, they reproduce every 15 minutes, while nitrifiers reproduce about every 15 hours. the decayers and nutrient burners will always win the race to establishment and when doing a fishless "food" cycle, 100% they are going to be the dominant bacteria in the aquarium.

Up to you but either way you do it from this point, do not add any more food to the tank, you are just feeding the decayers and they need to multiply and crash and then downsize in population to make room for the nitrifiers.

the only time you would add food again would be if ammonia is at zero. if you choose to clean, clean but dont' get crazy on it, you need some things left behind for the decay bacteria to feed them but it needs to be more of a "balance" if you know what I mean, right now it's just too heavy decayers.

I hope this all makes sense to some degree for what you see happening. food cycling can take more like 2 months +, and you have to keep an eye on the ammonia production because your ammonia is literally all being produced by decayer bacteria types, there needs to be a dieoff of them as they exhaust resources and then their dieoff will create ammonia also.

At that point you'll get die off of the decayers and diatoms and other ammonia creators as they run out of their resources which will give the nitrifiers a chance to take over, but if you keep feeding the tank to create more ammonia, you are just creating more and more decay consumers which will block the nitrifiers from getting places to establish.

 

Hi Guys

I cannot get my new tank to start to cycle.
I've got a 70l tank and I set it up about 5 weeks ago, I started adding fish food and adding aqi quick start and have been testing every day, the ammonia has risen to to 5ppm and has just stayed there since, no nitrites and nitrates have ever came up on a test. I started using seachem stabilty 7 days ago and still nothing, pH is at 7.0 and water temperature is at 24 degrees but for some reason the tank wont start to cycle, please help

Maybe a reputable fish store can give or sell you some water from their system to get it jump started? No RO DI water but water from their current tanks filtration system.

 

Maybe a reputable fish store can give or sell you some water from their system to get it jump started? No RO DI water but water from their current tanks filtration system.

Water doesnt have very much bacteria in it. That really wont do a whole bunch. A chunk of filter media on the other hand........I really dont want to use fish store water in my tank usually anyway.

 

Yeah there is that. When i worked at a small pet store we had people that would purchase water from our system to get their tanks started. Not sure why then...

 

As it's a new tank, getting the ammonia in is the first hurdle so that's a start. If you have dechlorinated your water and are not washing your filter media under the tap (or at all for a moment) there is no reason your beneficial bacteria colony won't start to grow.

It's also worth checking your test strips/kit are in date and you are getting accurate readings.

Otherwise the following is written from my personal experience and opinion, but what I would do now is stop adding food in to the tank so your ammonia doesn't continue to go up. Then check that your beneficial bacteria product is in date, has not been open for a long time or got too hot, and contains the correct type (you can get nitrifying or sludge busting or a combination of both). I myself have found these two types can actually out compete each other in a new aquarium and this can slow down the process so would only recommend the ammonia and nitrite eating stuff.

Lastly if you haven't already and are happy to do so I would consider adding some live planting, even if it's just a bunch of oxygenating weed for the cycle. or if you have any fish keeping friends a sample from a mature filter or a scoop of mature substrate can really help.

Otherwise just be patient, it will cycle in time but sadly the process can be slow (but kinder of course) when done fishless.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys