Having trouble cycling my 55 gallon

[jpulenskey]

I had the 55 set up and cycled with an oscar about 2 months ago. I gave the oscar to someone with a bigger tank and decided to change to a more natural looking substrate. In doing so, I killed the bacteria in the tank. Now, I've been constantly checking the levels in the tank and several times have seen Nitrite levels spike and go away by the next day. Ammonia levels never go down but every few days I have Nitrite. No Nitrate.

 

[carsona246]

My tank cracked, and now I'm using a rubbermaid bin till I find a decent priced 40 breeder. Waterchanges everyday for me.

 

[nfored]

While water changes will help with the nitrite, it might not help with the ammonia depending on the amount of ammonia in the tank, and in your tap if they are close to the same.

When I was cycling the first time doing all these water changes prolonged my cycle, and I had to use prime in the changes. So I ended up not doing as many changes, I kept an eye on nitrite and as long as it was low I didn't do a change, I just added amequel to make the ammonia non toxic. I know others will disagree with my method but its my method, others will give you their method and you will choose the one that best works for you; and then you will have your own method.

 

[carsona246]

Waterchanges help with ammonia removal. If you have chloramine in your tap yes it will already have ammonia, but not everyone has chloramine added to their tap. Also it's my understanding that part of the ammonia will evaporate over 24 hours once the chloramine has been converted. But yea if you do have chloramines in your tap cycling with fish sucks balls

 

[nfored]

Waterchanges help with ammonia removal. If you have chloramine in your tap yes it will already have ammonia, but not everyone has chloramine added to their tap. Also it's my understanding that part of the ammonia will evaporate over 24 hours once the chloramine has been converted. But yea if you do have chloramines in your tap cycling with fish sucks balls

ammonia will evaporate over 24 hours This is 100% not the case, what happens is your filters remove it.

The reason I said I don't do changes for ammonia is this and again its just my way.

lets say your fish make 2ppm per day in your tank, and it takes that tank 5 weeks to cycle without changing the water.

Now lets take the same setup 2ppm/day but this time each day you do a 50% water change so each day its only 1ppm. Now lets say it take the same 5 weeks to cycle that.

SO now you have a tank cycled for 1ppm/day your shout oh ya oh ya tanks cycled you stop doing water changes but keep testing. Then you see what ammonia how is this i cycled. But you only cycled for half the amount that your fish make, so now you have to keep cycling again.

This is because the bio can only grow big enough to handle whats in the tank, it wont grow past this.

 

[carsona246]

? if your tank is uncycled your filter isn't removing any ammonia. I was refering to the ammonia from the chloramines evaporating when the dechlorinator broke the chloramine bonds. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that part of the ammonia from only the chloramines evaporates, just wanted to clarify.
However if your tap has 1 ppm of ammonia from the chloramines and your tank has 2 ppm's you should still probably do a waterchange. 1 ppm is still less than 2, so yes it will hurt the speed of your cycling process, but 2 ppm's of ammonia isn't in the safe zone for your fish. If you want a quick cycle go fishless, but if you can't go fishless, your stuck with waterchanges or putting your fish in too much ammonia

 

[nfored]

Agreed, but thats why I add amaquil. I figured since I was adding it for each water change, why not just add it and let the ammonia do what it does, since its now harmless.

I am interested to see if anyone else chims in on this evaporation, if thats the case its new to me. But now that I think about it I have a prime example why I think that can't be the case.

When I setup my drip system the bond is broken and only ammonia is left, having this drip 24 gallons a day into a 220 gallon with a 55 gallon sump, cause a mini cycle while my filter caught up. 1ppm in tap dived by 10 is 0.1ppm (24 gallons drip / Tank volume) that means it would take 5 days without evaporation and without bio assistance to hit .5 ppm SO then if 0.1 evaporated each day then in 5 days you would have added .5 and subtracted .4 leaving you with .1

But that was not the case in the first week I hit 1ppm before my filter caught up, with the addition.