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123 Posts
I've read a lot about the cycling... but I don't think I've ever heard of my Nitrates disappearing.
This is a 20g L tank with Flourish and sand substrate. Other than the Prime I used to treat the water in the beginning I haven't done anything else to the tank other than dosing it every day with the bacteria in a bottle.
Some BG info before I start:
TAP:
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
My tank the first day after using Seachem's Stability (will explain later)
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
I've been following the instructions on the bottle for 4 days now. Yesterday I went out to buy fish food to use to make ammonia for the growing bacteria to eat. This was on day 3:
7.8-8 pH
0.25 ppm Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
As of this morning, this was my following reading:
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
0 Nitrates
So what's up with that? The big pinch of fish food is still in the tank, but my Nitrates just disappeared? I do have two live plants (anubis and amazon) in the tank atm along with one medium piece of driftwood. No fish. I haven't done any water changes since setting up the tank back on day 1, so the environment hasn't changed other than the fish food. Will it take a few days before the fish food leech enough ammonia to really show a difference? There's a pretty good sized blob in my tank at the moment which i thought would certainly be enough.
Oh, and the tank is kept at 75F.
The reason why I'm using bacteria-in-a-bottle method is because I could not find pure ammonia anywhere. No joke. Ace hardware is too far for me to bike or walk and I don't know what bus takes me to the general area. The only friend I have with a car is usually busy doing her own things and I hate bugging her, but there's no guarantee that the ammonia is there either.
This is a 20g L tank with Flourish and sand substrate. Other than the Prime I used to treat the water in the beginning I haven't done anything else to the tank other than dosing it every day with the bacteria in a bottle.
Some BG info before I start:
TAP:
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
My tank the first day after using Seachem's Stability (will explain later)
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
I've been following the instructions on the bottle for 4 days now. Yesterday I went out to buy fish food to use to make ammonia for the growing bacteria to eat. This was on day 3:
7.8-8 pH
0.25 ppm Ammonia
0 Nitrites
5 Nitrates
As of this morning, this was my following reading:
7.8-8 pH
0 Ammonia
0 Nitrites
0 Nitrates
So what's up with that? The big pinch of fish food is still in the tank, but my Nitrates just disappeared? I do have two live plants (anubis and amazon) in the tank atm along with one medium piece of driftwood. No fish. I haven't done any water changes since setting up the tank back on day 1, so the environment hasn't changed other than the fish food. Will it take a few days before the fish food leech enough ammonia to really show a difference? There's a pretty good sized blob in my tank at the moment which i thought would certainly be enough.
Oh, and the tank is kept at 75F.
The reason why I'm using bacteria-in-a-bottle method is because I could not find pure ammonia anywhere. No joke. Ace hardware is too far for me to bike or walk and I don't know what bus takes me to the general area. The only friend I have with a car is usually busy doing her own things and I hate bugging her, but there's no guarantee that the ammonia is there either.