Using Pure Ammonia in New Tank Cycling

cyberloach72

IMHO, the best bet is to keep trying to maintain that 5 ppm level for as long as possible. So, at first, you might have to add 10ml of ammonia every three days to maintain 5 ppm, but as time goes on and you gain more bacteria, you might wind up having to add 30ml ammonia every day to keep that 5 ppm level (10ml and 30ml are just examples and like I said, would vary from person to person....I am just trying to work in round numbers).


20ml of ammonia was the amount that was needed at once to get the reading back up to 5ppm. I definately was adding to little at 10ml. Obviously, the bacteria has reached high numbers and my tank is showing signs of algae growth on the plants, gravel and decor.

On another note, what would be your recommendation for high pH and alkalinity? My wife says add pH decreaser and I say do a partial water change. So you know the nitrates read high in this tank (10gal) which is why I recommend a water change. I am a little hesitant about the water change since the problem is last time I removed about 1/2 the water in this tank and the darn thing got all cloudy for some reason for nearly two weeks. Still can't figure out why that happened?

E46er

the cloudiness could have been a bacteria boom and just coincidental it happened as a WC was done?

Tommy Gun

If alkalinity is low, then the pH will be less stable and can be changed easier...so many of us enjoy high Kh (alkalinity). My suggestion for pH would be to leave it as it naturally occurs in your tank so long as it is somewhere between 5.0 and 9.0. It is easier, much less work/monitoring, and in the vast majority of cases, you can acclimate your fish to anything in that range of pH without a lot, if any, problems...even over the long term.

If you don't have any fish in the tank, then why worry about nitrates at all? Doing water changes right now only means you are removing the ammonia and nitrites you need to keep cycling. Unless there is something about your situation that I am forgetting, I would suggest skipping any and all water changes and turn up the water temp to 85 - 90 degrees (F).

I agree, the cloudy water could have been a slight bacteria bloom...which isn't really a big deal to you right now. Just before you add your fish, you will need to do a big water change to get all those nitrates out, which should help prevent another bacteria bloom...hopefully.

cyberloach72

Thanks. Glad to know what that cloudiness was about.

The 10gal tank I am referring to has been cycled for several years not the 29gal that I am doing a fishless cycle. Sorry for the confusion. I didn't think I should start another title for such a general question.

Anyway it's taken care of via water change and that will do. I just was alarmed of how high the nitrates were and did not want it to compromise my guppies and swordtail I have in the 10gal.

Back to the 29gal, I have been increasing the amount of ammonia up to 20ml every 8-12 hrs because 10ml was not enough to filfill the bacteria's hunger. Nitrates are higher than nitrite though....is this unusual?

Thanks for the replies and sorry again for the confusion!

Loman

Glad to hear things are progressing. Sounds like the tank is coming along nicely. A couple of comments

To expand on what Tommy was saying:

Clearly agree that you can acclimate fish to the pH in this range. Often time people try to get to a specific pH and lower the alkalinity which destabilizes the pH. While fish will do fine at any part of this range they need to be in fairly constant pH. To adjust it it has to unstable so t can swing unpredictably and do far more harm than a slightly less than optimum pH

As the cycle progresses and you introduce more cumulative ammonia you can expect that Nitrates will accumulate. Nitrites will spike just like ammonia and then decrease over time to 0. So the real question is have the nitrite levels starting falling which will give you a signal that the tank is completing the cycle. After the cycle is complete I would expect the Nitrite levels to be 0 and Nitrates to be very high 100 or more. A large water change (or two) will get the nitrate level in control once the cycle is done.

cyberloach72

Thanks Loman for your help!

Question: Once my tank has cycled should I wash and scrub off the algae and black dusty sediment that has started collecting on my decor? I don't know if this will destabilize anything or be harmful to the fish once I introduce them to the tank. Is it possible that it will just go away with water changes?

Thanks again!

Loman

I would start with a water change and see what happens. You might swish it around a bit before hand to loosen anything that is not stuck on tight. If you have to scrub it I would do it a portion at a time because it will disturb the bacteria probably. I would try to leave the substrate more or less alone and just stir it up a bit them vacuum up loose debris.

cyberloach72

It looks as if I hit a bump in the road in my efforts of cycling my 29gal tank with ammonia. My testing results have shown inability to decrease the amount of ammonia i'm adding within a 12 hr period. For the first two weeks I was adding only 20ml of ammonia within a 24hr period and my bioload was able absorb it. For the past week I have increased it to 30ml per day because I was having difficulty maintaining the levels of ammonia to the recommended 4-5ppm.

I did some more research and found an article on the web that suggested not to use ammonium hydroxide because it lowers the pH and alkalinity which can kill the established bioload. It went on to suggest that using ammonium chloride is the choice you should use. http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article14.html

Has anyone had this problem between the two variations?

cyberloach72

Well here's the latest.

Ammonia 1ppm
Nitrate 200ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
pH 6.2ppm (acidic)
alkalinity 0ppm (low)
Hardness 75ppm (soft)

Don't know what's going on with these tank conditions. Is a water change in order here? How much?

Can't imagine it's cycled with ammonia still reading 1ppm.

Besides how am i supposed to transfer fish from my other tank into this one with such a huge pH swing?

Loman

I am guessing a bit on this one but if it were my tank I would give it a little while without adding new ammonia. A water change would probably also be fine since the Nitrates are huge. I am thinking that maybe there was just so much ammonia added that it could not process all of it but the tank is clearly converting a lot to have that high of a nitrate reading. So I would stop adding ammonia and do a normal water change and maybe a second one to get the nitrates down. I expect in doing that the pH will also return to a more normal range.