Aquarium just wont cycle

Don't shut your filters off for 30 minutes, start doing a water change about 30% turn your filters off, keep doing until 50% then refill, turn filters on and add sea chem. Turning your filter off for that long of time probably kills a lot of your bacteria since your running ACs and not a sump or canister. I had your sane issue a long time ago.

My filters are off for way more then 30 minutes most water changes..that said, I've never had a cycling (or re-cycling) problem in years of fish keeping...I don't think that's your problem

Wait, you have a 14inch wolf fish with your Oscar and 5inch severum and it hasn't tried to eat them???

You shouldn't have a problem with filters off for 30 minutes. Mine stay off for a couple hours when I do a complete tear down and Re scape. Try smaller water changes more often. Could help

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I'm doing 80% wc's as well

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Prime is the culprit. LOL! From the SeaChem website:
Q: I am using Prime® to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?

A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime®... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime®). A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime®), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. However, the best solution ;-) is to use our MultiTest: Ammonia™ kit... it uses a gas exchange sensor system which is not affected by the presence of Prime® or other similar products. It also has the added advantage that it can detect the more dangerous free ammonia and distinguish it from total ammonia (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic)).

IMO, I believe that 14" oscar is producing too much of a bioload and you don't have enough biomedia to compensate for all the ammonia. I use API liquid and multiple brand test strips when I was on city water and was using Prime, and never had any issue with false reading. What Joe Jaskot posted from Seachem only mentions ammonia, not nitrite or nitrate. Easiest thing to do is try another brand test kit.

What are you using for bio media in the HOB?

The filter being off for a water change for 30mins or so is not killing off your BB.

I have a somewhat similar problem with a 75 gal right now. But I'm measuring Nitrates, so I'm not real worried. Seems to me, if there was any bacteria working at all, you oughta see SOME nitrate. So, I'd get a new test kit first, or have LFS test it for free, and I'd buy a canister filter with a bunch a bio media?


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