Nitrogen cycle won't start

[Second Hand Pat]

This thread only proves my point that people on any fish forums refuse to acknowledge.. If you have an aquarium... And lets say its a mature aquarium thats been running for a year..... If you remove all the substrate and go barebottom and keep your canister or whatever filter your running.. its almost a 100% certaintity that you are going to have a HUGE Ammonia spike and a mini cycle.. The reason is because IMO most of the BB is in the substrate.. I do not care what people say.. this thread and my own experience fish keeping for 20 years has proven this over and over. You can run BB tanks sure thats obvious... but your "mature" filter that was running in the mature tank with gravel... Actually needs to build up more BB to account for the loss of the BB that was in your gravel..

Its okay if no one agrees with me on this, but this thread just proved my point.. It will happen on a 2 week cycle like he had, or a mature 1-2 year old tank and filter... If you remove your gravel.. your filter thats mature will not be able to keep up with the bioload.. It will eventually once more BB grow in the filter though..

Think of it like this... You have a HUGE LAND MASS right and a Equal mass of tunnles underneeth... You have people spread all over it and under it.. However.. You only have enough food to feed a certain amount of people.. Most of the people on the top get the food. And the people on the bottom get the leftovers.. This causes the population on the bottom to remain stagnant or in decline... The people on the top represent the gravel.. The people on the bottom represent the filter.. Then comes along some natural disaster and kills or removes everyone on top.. Thus giving the people on the bottom ALL THE FOOD.. and what happens ? The population explodes and is no longer stagnant. This is what happens with filters and substrates....

For most discus keepers a mini-cycle is not an issue. We simply increase our daily water changes amounts. Whenever you add significant bio-load to a tank (like one or more large discus) you will get an mini-cycle. If you remove some of the material (substrate or whatever) the BB is growing on you might get a mini-cycle (depends on what and amount).
Pat

[Discus3anatic]

I'm not going to agree with you on that one. I had gravel in my tank for about the first month then realized that bare bottom was a better way to go, for me. I pulled all the gravel out at once and never had any kind of spike. That tank has 2 Ehiem canisters that are rated for 160 gals. each and it's a 150 gal. maybe that's why I beat your 100% certainty.

Or it could be that your bio load just isnt that high for a 150g tank.. I garuntee you i probably have more fish my 55 and 90g tanks then your 150g tank does

[MendoMan]

Or it could be that your bio load just isnt that high for a 150g tank.. I garuntee you i probably have more fish my 55 and 90g tanks then your 150g tank does

Fourteen , well fed , sub adults. 5'' to 7''. I won't put an more in a tank that size.

[MazDiscus]

I tested the water again today, and still reading 1-2 ppm ammonia, zero nitrite and nitrate ! I added a full bottle of TSS 3 days ago but it seems that there is not a single bacteria in the tank. I am reading these numbers for 5 weeks now, I guess I am doing something wrong. Please help !

[briztoon]

My advice. Buy a large tub or bin and set your filter up on the tub or bin, and do a fishless cycle on the tub or bin. Do NO water changes on the tub or bin while running the fishless cycle.

As I said in my first reply, every water change you do on a cycling tank/filter slows the cycle down.

In the mean time, do large daily water changes on the tank with your discus in. It won't matter that there is no filter or the tank is not cycled (we don't really cycle a tank, we cycle the filter) as the large daily water changes will keep ammonia, nitrite and nitrates under control. You should add a couple of sponge filters or even just a couple of air curtains while you cycle the main filter. Plus you should see noticeable growth in your discus if you are feeding appropriately and doing the appropriate daily changes.

I can't stress enough how good this video is.
https://youtu.be/VXe3VKh7qF8?t=13m36s

[DJW]

Do you have fish in this tank?

If you are using the flake food method to create ammonia in the tank, this takes longer than adding ammonia directly because you have to wait for bacteria to break down the food and release ammonia.

Do you have access to another healthy fish tank where you can get some filter media or a few handfuls of gravel?

Also, responding to a question you had earlier, using prime to neutralize the ammonia & nitrite is not a substitute for water changes, it is more of a temporary help with toxins. WC's provide healthier water.

[MazDiscus]

My advice. Buy a large tub or bin and set your filter up on the tub or bin, and do a fishless cycle on the tub or bin. Do NO water changes on the tub or bin while running the fishless cycle.

As I said in my first reply, every water change you do on a cycling tank/filter slows the cycle down.

In the mean time, do large daily water changes on the tank with your discus in. It won't matter that there is no filter or the tank is not cycled (we don't really cycle a tank, we cycle the filter) as the large daily water changes will keep ammonia, nitrite and nitrates under control. You should add a couple of sponge filters or even just a couple of air curtains while you cycle the main filter. Plus you should see noticeable growth in your discus if you are feeding appropriately and doing the appropriate daily changes.

I can't stress enough how good this video is.
https://youtu.be/VXe3VKh7qF8?t=13m36s

Thanks for your help. I can move my discus to a 29G tank which I can do 100% water change daily and will do a fishless cycle in the 40G. Also the Ph in my tank is a bit low, around 6.6-6.8 . I've read that low Ph can slow down the cycle, do you think I should increase the Ph?

And that's a great video

[MazDiscus]

Do you have fish in this tank?

If you are using the flake food method to create ammonia in the tank, this takes longer than adding ammonia directly because you have to wait for bacteria to break down the food and release ammonia.

Do you have access to another healthy fish tank where you can get some filter media or a few handfuls of gravel?

Also, responding to a question you had earlier, using prime to neutralize the ammonia & nitrite is not a substitute for water changes, it is more of a temporary help with toxins. WC's provide healthier water.

I just did a fishless cycle for two weeks then added 3 discus and a pleco almost 5 weeks ago. But no nitrite and nitrate yet. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a cycled media.

[DJW]

The last time I had to get a tank cycled from scratch, I kept a log.

90g tank, started with Eco Complete gravel and two large bottles of SafeStart (500ml).

Dosed ammonia to 2.0 ppm and added as needed to keep 2ppm.

Day 4: nitrite= 0.25ppm; nitrate= 10ppm
Day 7: nitrite spike 2ppm; nitrate=40ppm
tapered ammonia down to 1ppm
Day 12: nitrite=0; nitrate 70-80ppm
Day 13: changed water, ordered fish, dosed ammonia daily to 0.5ppm.

I don't know if it was the Eco Complete or the SafeStart or both, but there was obviously a starting culture for it to have reached a full cycle in 2 weeks. I was only planning to add a small number of fish, otherwise I would have kept ammonia at 2ppm, which would be about the right level for a moderately stocked tank.

[MazDiscus]

I was trying to find the optimum ph and temperature range for nitrifying bacteria and I saw this article : http://www.bioconlabs.com/nitribactfacts.html . It says that the bacteria grow very slowly at ph levels less that 7.0. My tanks's ph is less than 7. The colors in API test kit are very similar and I cannot tell if it is 6.6 or 6.8, but definitely less than 7.

I 100% agree with you that water changes slow down the cycle, but reading zero nitrite and nitrate after 5 weeks of ammonia presence in the tank doesn't make sense to me. I believe something is preventing the cycle from starting and now I guess it is because of low ph. I'd love to hear your thoughts, do you think I should increase the ph? if yes, what is the best way to gradually increase the ph and not having ph crash after water changes?

p.s. I moved all the discus to a 20 Gallon tank which I can do 100% water change daily, and kept a bristlenose in the main tank and waiting for the cycle to begin.

[DJW]

Adjusting PH with chemicals is difficult because it has a tendency to swing and wander and have delayed reactions to the chemicals you add to change it. You can raise the PH with baking soda but I would remove the bristlenose catfish first and do this fishless. Can you move him to the 20g tank? Then you won't have to do any water changes in the 40g tank.

Nitrifying bacteria are not that well understood apparently. New ones are still being identified and there might be some that work at a lower PH but grow slowly. Many aquarists who keep low PH tanks see ammonia disappear and nitrates rise, which suggests that there is more going on than just the two types mentioned in your link.

Here are two past threads that deal with this. Read the posts by Apistomaster.

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...mp-pH-problems

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...l-Biotope-tank

When I researched this a while ago I also looked at these links:

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/nitrogen-cycle

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC93373/

http://theaquariumwiki.com/Aquarium_..._Nitrification

http://web.archive.org/web/200612191...Nitrospira.asp

[briztoon]

Wondering if there might be something up with your test kit.

[MazDiscus]

Thank you guys. 0.5ppm nitrite ! it seems that the cycle started eventually

[aussietech]

Thank you for all the great information. I'll try to keep the ammonia near zero with WC, Prime and TSS until the tank gets cycled again. But I still have two questions, if Prime conditioner detoxifies the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, what is the reason for water change? Don't you think using prime and not doing daily water changes will accelerate the process?

After almost 4 weeks of having some ammonia in tank, I was expecting to see a spike in nitrite, but I am still reading zero. You guys think it is normal to take this long?

I am having the same problem. I have 2ppm amonia and the nitrite and nitrate just will not kick in. I've tried all sorts of things. I've never removed the substrate and apart from occassional water changes, I can't get the cycle to start. I started with Safe Start to start the aquarium, and now using Quick Start. I lost one fish in this aquarium so I moved the other to another established aquarium so it would not suffer the same fate. No matter what I do, I can't get the cycle to kick in. And this has been for over two months now.

[Willie]

I run only barebottom tanks with 100% water changes daily. Never had a cycling issue. The bacterial colony in your filter is more than sufficient for effective nitrogen cycling. And once you have enough, more is not better. Substrate contributes to dirt, not better cycling.

MazDiscus made the typical newbie mistake of adding fish before cycling happens. In my local area, I offer cycled sponges for free to any hobbyist who needs to cycle their tank. None of the commercial 'starter' liquids have any basis in science.

If anyone near the Twin Cities need cycled sponges, PM me for a pickup. If anyone on this forum needs cycled sponges and will pay for postage, PM me.