The Cycle from Hell!

[twhittle]

Okay, I thought my tank was cycled after several weeks. 0 ammonia or nitrites. After adding fish (I think too much too fast) the cycle started again. It has been 4 weeks and I thought I was getting somewhere when my ammonia was dropping and I noticed nitrites and some nitrates. After doing a water change yesterday we are back to .5 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and 0 nitrate! This is a 180 gallon with a mega flow 4 sump system. I have been adding ammo-lock and seeding the tank with safe start bacteria. Any thoughts or advice?

 

[Rivermud]

sounds to me like to are crashing your colony. You might be trying to hard.

 

[dmopar74]

Use seachem stability, thank me later.

 

[joe jaskot]

Add some live aquarium plants (like java moss) to the tank. Plenty of beneficial bacteria on the plants. Tank will cycle in no time. Plants will use the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the aquarium.

 

[twhittle]

Add some live aquarium plants (like java moss) to the tank. Plenty of beneficial bacteria on the plants. Tank will cycle in no time. Plants will use the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the aquarium.

Should I add them to the sump? Cichlids and plants you know...

 

[twhittle]

sounds to me like to are crashing your colony. You might be trying to hard.

Should I not be using ammo lock?

 

[twhittle]

Use seachem stability, thank me later.

I'll give it a try.

 

[nossalucard]

Add: PATIENCE!!!

Only TIME can cycle a tank properly, no matter how much money you throw at it. You ONLY other help would be cleaning some friends dirty filter media in your tank, or asking a LFS for to squeeze out some dirty filter media in a bag of thir tank water for you(and hope they have no pathogens/ick in their system if centralized). Even then, that bacteria STILL has to get settled and attached to your media and multiply....

Patience my friend, patience..... The waiting ALWYAS SUCKS!!!

 

[predatorkeeper87]

I'll whole-heartedly disagree with the older methods of tank cycling at this point. SeaChem Stability has cycled multiple tanks for me within a weeks time. And by cycled I mean 0 ammo, 0 nitrite, 10-40 nitrate depending on tank size and stock.

 

[nossalucard]

And that's what great about America, we can agree to disagree! Yea, I'll admit, I tried that that 1-shot cycle stuff once (tetra safestart-formerly BIOSPira), and even thought it worked for like a week! Boy was I wrong(cycle restarted 1 week later, and STILL lasted 6 weeks), but best of luck to you my friend!