question about the progression of my fishless cycle

[mishi8]

I did read the instructions for the fishless cycle, but i was unclear about how much ammonia to keep in the tank after the nitrite spike.

day 13 readings

ph 6.8
ammonia 1.0
nitrite off the chart, (greater than 5.0 ppm)
nitrate between .5 and 1.0 ppm

im gona bring the ammonia back up to 2.5 ppm (or there abouts)

thanks

also should i be concerned about the ph drop from 7 to 6.8 ?

tkz

You need to keep an eye on your pH, but, more importantly, you need to monitor your KH. It is consumed during the cycle, and if it gets too low, your pH can crash and cycle stall. If you see it dropping to a low level, do a large volume water change and/or add baking soda to raise the KH to a normal level.

 

[mishi8]

I've never heard of ammonia killing bacteria. The bacteria you want uses the ammonia for food.

Kim

Too much ammonia can negatively impact the nitrifying bacteria and stall the cycle. BTDT.

 

[hmt321]

You need to keep an eye on your pH, but, more importantly, you need to monitor your KH. It is consumed during the cycle, and if it gets too low, your pH can crash and cycle stall. If you see it dropping to a low level, do a large volume water change and/or add baking soda to raise the KH to a normal level.

my test kit does not have a test for KH or GH so im off to the lfs, what should these lvls look like?

thanks

 

[hurricanejedi]

GH isn't as important. But your KH should be 3 or greater. Once it gets below 3 things can start to become unstable (drop quickly). If you are experiencing a drop in pH it could be that your kH is non-existant and a pH crash will result. If your tap has a low KH then you might need to look into buffering which happens a lot of you have city water.

 

[LunchBox]

or if it's really high you can come in here and taunt the people with really low kh :spam:

 

[hmt321]

ok here are todays test results day 15 ( i think, i have a bad head right now, happy mardi gras)

ph = 6.8 - 7
ammonia= .5 ppm
nitrite = 5.0 ppm (off the chart)
nitrate = 20 ppm

kh = 0 ppm or 1? (it did not read)
gh = 71.6 or 4 (the light is real bad in my office right now so it could be slightly lower)

seems like my nitrite spike is definatly happening, the nitrate is building as well

o by the way my tap water kh and gh readings are as follows

kh = 0.0 could not read
gh = 4-5 71.6-89.5

the kh and gh seem very close to my tap readings.

im gona bring my ammonia back to 2ppm and wait another 2 days to see if my nitrite lvls drop

if they do not im gona do a 50%-60% Water change and then bring my ammonia back to 2ppm

thanks for the advise

 

[hmt321]

bump