Fishless Cycling Problem

Hi Dave,

I'm Sue from the other forum 


I completely forgot to mention using a plant fertiliser as someone on the other forum has suggested. Your water is so soft that it's short of everything, and plant fertiliser contains lots of trace minerals. I use Seachem Flourish, the one without anything else added to the name.

I think maybe see if the advice you've been given 'over there' by the poster called Steven would help, he really knows his stuff.

Just had a quick thought, is there anyway I could of squashed the sponges in the filter which would cause the bacteria not to grow?

Water seems ok out the outlet, causing rippling on water surface.

99.9% sure plastic is off. The top layer piece split into 3, so I just used one of them, hopefully that was ok.

Here is a post of my tests and sponges, Two blue sponges are on bottom and blue and green one on top. I have put carbon one in but not sure I need it. Is that right? And top right one seems a little dirty.

Hi

No I don't have cirax, it's an option you can purchase separately. Is this something I should have? Also do I need the black carbon filter.

You don't need cirax, sponges are a very good home for bacetria.

The general consensus is that the nitrate sponge doesn't work, and even Juwel says it doesn't work immediately. From their website with my italics

The nitrate removal sponge contains bacteria, which will after a while reduce the nitrate level

They say that the green sponge contains anaerobic bacteria that break down nitrate - but anaerobic means in the absence of oxygen, and the filter has lots of oxygenated water flowing through it so anaerobic bacteria won't grow there.


The general opinion is that it doesn't remove nitrate so treat it like a blue sponge and leave it there till it starts to fall apart.
But if you wish to, there's no reason you can't remove it, let it dry and put it in the cupboard until the tank has cycled. There is plenty more media to grow enough bacteria to support a tankful of fish.

I'd not come across that till I saw it on Juwel's website looking for that quote. They say it is zeolite. I would never use this in an aquarium of mine.

It removes ammonia, so there is none left to get the bacteria to grow. If you use it you are tied in to changing it before it becomes full for ever. If you don't change it in time, it becomes saturated, stops absorbing ammonia and, because you haven't been able to grow any bacteria, the ammonia level in the tank rockets and harms the fish.

It works out expensive changing it on a regular basis for ever. It is much cheaper to grow some bacteria.

Zeolite also absorbs medication, so you have to remove it if the fish get sick - and then ammonia will rocket as a result.



Zeolite does have a place. If something happens to the filter bacteria when the fish keeper is not there to sort it out, zeolite can be used to save the fish. We once had a member who was away on a business trip. His wife phoned him to say she was testing the water as instructed and found the ammonia reading was high for some reason. because he wasn't there to investigate, we suggested his wife get some zeolite to protect the fish till his return.

It is common. Juwel do tend to give the volume as being the amount of water it will hold when empty. But we put in substrate and decor which displaces a lot of water so the volume of water we end up with is somewhat less than the empty volume.
Other makes give the volume as the amount of space occupied by the whole tank, including the thickness of the glass, the space under the bottom pane with floating bases, and the air space on top of the water.

Use the amount of water the tank holds, 105 litres.

Those figures convert to

GH 107 ppm = 6 German deg
KH 53 ppm = 3 German deg

GH shouldn't vary much. It will only change significantly if you use a substrate or decor that is made of calcium carbonate (eg coral sand, limestone rocks) as these will dissolve and increase GH; or if the tank water evaporates a lot and you top it up with tap water - in this case, the water evaporates but leaves the minerals that comprise GH behind and when you top up you add more minerals so GH gradually increases.

KH can vary. The natural tendency of fish tanks is to become acidic. Nitrate made by the filter bacteria (once the tank is cycled!) and other things excreted by fish are acidic. Carbonate reacts with acids and they get used up. If there's not much there to start with - like yours (and mine) - KH can fall to zero meaning a pH crash is likely. This isn't a problem once the tank is cycled as large regular water changes will keep the KH topped up, but during cycling we don't do water changes, and we make a lot of nitrate so KH can get used up.

It is important to keep an eye on your KH during cycling, and I would also keep an eye on it for a while after you have a tankful of fish. And keep an eye on pH.




Back about 10 years ago I was lazy about doing water changes. Sometimes I went 3 or 4 weeks between changes. And I was overstocked as I now realise. Then I discovered that my pH had dropped by a lot so I came on-line looking for a solution, and found Thinkfish. The site had an advisor back then, and he told me it was because of my low KH - at that time my water company used a table which gave both GH and KH. He recommended that I use remineralisation salts of the kind that people who use RO water need, but I found that by changing at least 30% of the water every week without fail stopped the pH dropping.
I did buy GH and KH testers and kept an eye on those for a good while, but once I knew that my water change regime kept the KH high enough, I never bought any more testers once they ran out.