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Cycle help!

2K views 8 replies 5 participants last post by  Intilis 
#1 ·
I'm trying to cycle my first tank, and it doesn't seem to be working. Any and all advice welcome:

I have a 10 gallon tank. It's divided, with 2 betta and 6 neon tetra. The tank is heated to 78, filtered, and I just added a pump with very gentle bubbles.

I set it up a month ago, and I still have 0ppm nitrites & nitrates. Amonia goes from .25 to .50 ppm. I do a 50% water change whenever it hits .50 ppm & I add 20 drops of prime every day. I also used tetra safestart when I set it up, and add more with each water change. Help!!

What am I doing wrong?
 
#2 ·
FIWI Prime will still cause ammonia tests (like the api) to show ammonia. You could try the seachem multitest kit and/or the seachem ammonia dot. The idea is to only use prime to treat the free dangerous ammonia. the danger is you test ammonia add prime test ammonia etc. Meanwhile that first Prime dose may have been all that was required to treat the ammonia. Prime also reduces oxygen in the water so the danger is causing low oxygen and suffocating the fish.


I presume your question is why hasn't my ammonia dropped down? I would add some fast growing plants like anacharis. They will consume the ammonia missed by the bacteria and keep ammonia low. The plants also consume nitrates, phosphates, co2 and filter out nasties like copper as well. While returning oxygen and fish food.


so I would stop automatically adding prime, stop the water changes and see what happens. With plants you may never see ammonia again. Without you will probably see an ammonia spike that eventually drops down.




my .02
 
#3 ·
Only dose prime every 48 hrs. After 48 hrs test the water and do a water change . If you add prime daily, you are just wasting it and not getting a proper reading on your test. I find that this is the easiest way to do in-fish cycling. How are you maintaining/cleaning your filter? What type of filter? What is the PH of your water?
 
#5 · (Edited)
Seachem says Prime lasts up to 48-hours. But it doesn't protect fully for two days then switch off all at once; the protection starts to decay right away, so after a day much of it is gone. It may not be reduced to half as effective (it probably decays on a curve) but Seachem has never made it clear to me exactly how it works. Bob is right in that the API test reads all the ammonia, even that which is safely locked in Prime's harmless molecule. So it's safer to add some than to let the protection decay.

Anyway, I would add Prime daily so any ammonia is always locked. API test results will not tell you if or how much is locked, so...

Bob is also right in that live, healthy, fast-growing plants remove ammonia faster than cycling bacteria. If you can handle it, stock as many plants as you can maintain reasonably. Really jungle it up in there. The cycling bacteria should take up the slack by removing any ammonia that the plants leave behind.

Many keepers use this technique to conveniently establish the nitrogen cycle:
CYCLING: the two-sentence tutorial

I am concerned that the Safestart has not cycled the tank by now. Most of us who use it report a basic cycle within a couple of weeks ... and you should only have to dose it once. It is possible that it got overheated during shipping. Heat (>95*), cold (<40*), and drying out are the only ways to kill cycling bacteria.

Keeping one's collection in a smaller auxiliary tank while the display tank cycles is arguably harder on the livestock than a fish-in cycle made safe by using Prime.

I would also like to know your maintenance schedule and procedure, and your pH ... hardness, too, if you can get it.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for all of the advice! I have been following the tutorial from day one.

I am finally making progress! Ammonia is 0 ppm, and nitrites are between .25 & .50 hurray!!!

Hallyx, I think you may be right about the safestart. I think I also may have delayed things by following bad advice from my LFS. I added the tetra about 5 days in because they told me the betta wouldn't produce enough ammonia to start the cycle.

About my maintenance schedule and PH. PH is 7.6, and I plan to do weekly 50% WC after the tank is cycled. I have been doing 50% WC much more frequently, probably about 3-4 times per week (whenever ammonia is close to .50ppm).

I'm excited because I think I'm finally on my way to a cycled tank!
 
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