Fishless cycling saga continues.

[KLKelly]

I've been fishless cycling uncontaminated and new emergency media for the past five weeks in case I need to do another round of levamisole.  Everything was going good - it was eating up 2-3ppm of ammonia per day.  The PH crashed in the FC tank - its below 6.  I could just scream.  The cycle is gone.  Ammonia is staying at 4, nitrites are 0 but Nitrates are still dark red. I thought nitrites going to zero was a sign that I was cycled.  I never thought of testing ph.  Its a ten gallon with an AC110 and a ton of biomedia.  I guess all this biomedia ate up the high KH with infrequent water changes and crashed it.

Have I said how much I hate water?

[dan2x38]

I have a strong feeling you will not be able to maintain a workable bio-filter with this method. In theory it should work. I've done fishless cycling and it is not the same as the real deal. For the final step to complete the bio-filter I had to add fish to get the final results. With all the parts and pieces you have why not set-up a sump? You can just add filters on the side of it to populate the media. I think it would result in a more reliable back-up system.

[KLKelly]

I only wanted it cycled enough to use - we never got to that point.  There is something in my water that affects the nitrogen cycle. (besides the crashing PH)  My well water has a kh of 14.   Even using RO water on the freshwater tanks it took four weeks for ammonia to go away in the three other tanks.

I have two tiny goldfish in a 20 gallon tank with an AC50 on it and it is still showing ammonia and nitrites after 7 weeks.  And I'm only feeding once a day.  And by tiny I mean really really tiny.

The reason why I was fishless cycling was to have safe media - not contaminated with something I have in my tanks so that I could use it after levamisole and also to avoid cross contamination.  Each of my tanks have their own tools and gloves.

I ticked off the water Gods in a past life.

[J]

My experience with fishless cycling was similar. My eventual conclusion was to never ever want too add much ammonia. If you want to keep a tank going you really are only going to need to add trace amounts of ammonia. The way I look at it, if you try to maintain 2ppm ammonia, and your colony keeps growing you are having to add more and more ammonia in a 24 hr period to keep it in that range. At some point you are adding so much that it starts to mess with other variables in the tank and water. By adding just enough to get a reading on your test kit, you are maintaining your colony without expanding it and in turn you not having to "feed" more more little mouthes.

This is how I got going with my tank and I've had great results. I spiked ammonia to 2ppm first day, then kept it at 1 until i had a nitrite spike, then just enough ammonia to keep the cycle going or "fed" but not actually encouraging much more growth. I still had to do a near 200% water change to get the nitrates to zero when all was said and done.

If you want to support a larger bio load try a first day spike at say 3ppm and 2ppm until nitrites peak and so on..to a point of course. I would never try to have more than 3 ppm  as I feel anything over that is counter productive to growth rates. Again, the real key was only just adding enough ammonia post nitrite spike to keep them fed but not growing.

Ok, enough treating bacteria like a community of little people. 

[KLKelly]

Thanks.  They are for high bioload tanks thanks to the type of fish and my well water.

It turns out I didn't lose the cycle - I just overdosed the tank with ammonia somehow. 

Good to know about the ammonia.  I've been wanting it to eat up 4ppm of ammonia a day.  The cycle is finally complete after six weeks even though I used a TON of seeded media.  I think my well water makes for evilness with cycling somehow.  I even switched to reconstituted RO water and it didn't help speed it up.

I'll be putting the media in the tanks and extra filters this weekend.