3 days into fishless cycle and Nitrate already showing up?

[pbmax]

The nitrogen cycle produces acid.  Depending on the buffering capacity of your water (KH), you may or may not experience a drop in PH depending on how much nitrogenous waste is being processed in your tank (ammonia, primarily).  The KH of the drinking water supply around here is pretty low - mine is at about 5 dGHKH (community well); City of Lacey water is at about 3.

Adding some floating plants to your tank along with decent lighting to support them will help smooth out the cycle.  Aquatic plant can directly take up nitrogenous waste in all of its forms (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) and floating plants are particularly adept at this because they are exposed to the air and not limited by CO2.

Personally, I've only really cycled a tank twice - once with my first tank and once with an amazonia tank and pure R.O. water.  Thanks to eco-complete, my first tank cycled within a week with nothing else added but a few plants.  The rest of my tanks have insta-cycled thanks to plant density and a bit of a kick from some used filter media.  The amazonia tank never did cycle until I added some tap water...woops.

Edit: Another oops! I stated my water has GH of about 5 degrees; I meant KH. my GH is at about 4 degrees.

 

[SonicsDC25]

I was doing a PWC for my tank to hopefully get my pH up a bit and before I removed roughly 20% of the water, my wife added the water conditioner while I was getting the tap water from the sink. I then removed 20% of the water from the tank and replaced it with the tap water. Right before I was about to add the conditioner, she said she already did it...ale:  So since I removed 20% of the water, should I add 20% worth of water conditioner or do I add/less more???

 

[pbmax]

If you have no fish then it doesn't matter really. The chlorine will oxidize away in short order if it doesn't off-gas first.

That said, I don't think it matters if you add more water conditioner - you could probably dump the whole bottle into an active tank with fish in it and it wouldn't cause any problems. I don't know this for certain, but I've dumped tons of stress coat into a tank in the past with no discernible negative effect on anything.

You can add some baking soda to keep the PH up if you like (google for dosing). Or a product like Seachem Alkalinity. I'd do this over water changes, personally, especially while cycling.

 

[SonicsDC25]

That makes sense since there's no fish, I'll add a tiny bit extra for precautions since I don't want the chlorine killing my bacteria...

 

[pbmax]

A little searching found that 1 teaspoon of baking soda will increase KH (carbonate hardness) about 1 degree (17.9ppm) for 50g of water. It helps to know how much your KH is to begin with, but given that your PH is sagging, it wouldn't hurt to add some, then wait, re-measure PH an hour later, and then add more if necessary.

 

[SonicsDC25]

Awesome thanks, I'll look into that later on. For now I'm just more worried about any chlorine from the tap water killing off my beneficial bacteria and slowing down my cycle ale: 

 

[pbmax]

I'm betting that the amount of chlorine introduced into the tank, even if no water treatment was present, would be pretty insubstantial given that you only changed 20% of the water.  Since treatment was present, in slightly under-dosed form, I definitely wouldn't worry.  This means that it's possible 20% of the tap water you poured in wasn't treated.  That means 4% of the total tank volume possibly had a free chlorine level of up to 2 ppm - that's a really small amount of chlorine.

Look at it this way: you don't drink dechlorinator when you drink chlorinated water, right?  Yet somehow your gut bacteria manage to survive. This dosing is far, far lower than that.

 

[SonicsDC25]

Well when you put it that way, I'm feeling a lot better. My cycle seemed to have made a ton of progress in a short amount of time and I just didn't want to slow it down in any way.. I've been itching to drive down to The Wet Spot in Portland lol, or Aquarium Paradise in Lakewood since I hear it has a pretty good stock (and requires driving 2.2 hours less lol)

 

[SonicsDC25]

Ok, so I just checked my water parameters this morning and it seems to have been set back big time... After my 20% PWC yesterday, my parameters were: 8.2 pH, 2-3ppm Ammonia, 5.0+ppm Nitrite. This morning, they were: 6? pH (picture below), .5 - 1ppm Ammonia, and 5.0+ Nitrite still. Before the PWC, my Ammonia was converted within 24 hours and this time it didn't. Is it because my pH is too low? My pH crashed as well...Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 

 

[Madness]

So your fishless cycle has been going on 2 weeks now. From what I have read in the past, fishless cycles can take more than 30 days to right itself, and that assuming you are on top of things. (which it sounds like you are)

Most people dont have the patients to deal with this type of thing. (myself included ) If it were me I would spend the 15 bucks for fritz's instant bacteria additive. Wait 24 hours, check your params and then add a couple gold fish or cheap fish of whatever you own. Feed them and let them finish the cycle. I guarantee you in less than a week your tank will be ready to start populating.

A fishless cycle can take forever and as you are experiencing, very frustrating.

I personally couldnt deal with what your doing, just my opinion though.

Good luck

 

[SonicsDC25]

I prefer fishless cycle, I don't want to use goldfish as sacrificial pieces lol. I went ahead and put 3 teaspoons of baking soda in and got my pH up to 8.0, will check again tomorrow to see if there's another crash. I'm going to go get a bag of aragonite and putting it on my filter cartridge tomorrow to help keep the pH stable.

 

[SonicsDC25]

Two days ago I put 3 teaspoons of Baking Soda into my 29g tank and last night I put a bag of aragonite and 3 tablespoons of Epsom salt into my tank. This morning I woke up with these parameters, hopefully the cycle will be done before this weekend ^_^ I also dropped by Aquarium Paradise yesterday and they never even heard of a P. Saulosi :no:  Gonna call back on Friday to see if they got any from their supplier...

 

[SonicsDC25]

I think it's about time to head down to the LFS and start searching for some Saulosi

 

[pbmax]

Nice

I have similar results from my dry start tank (amazonia substrate) which appears to have cycled itself instantly - likely because it's been soggy (if not filled) since feb, building up lots of bacteria. My only issue there is it's gobbling up KH like no tomorrow.

 

[KaraWolf]

Yayyy that looks awesome XD

 

[SonicsDC25]

Well, called Aquarium Paradise, The Fish Store, Sierra Fish & Pets, A Place For Pets, Midway Fish & Pets, and Denny's Pet World and none of them had any Saulosi's in stock... ale: 

 

[pbmax]

It looks like The Wet Spot in Portland has them:

http://www.wetspottropicalfish.com/index.php/fish

I'm not sure how well they ship, but $15 is pretty good for next day shipping.

 

[Madness]

The Wet Spot has Saulosi, and $15 to ship up here. $7 @ 1.5" and $10 @ 2"

 

[Madness]

Dang pb you beat me to it.

 

[SonicsDC25]

I love Aulonocara Saulosi, but they just get too big for my tank Pseudotropheus Saulosi's are the ones I'm aiming for and I don't see them on their list :no: