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Nitrites are sky high - Cycle


BOMBreef

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So I'm going on day 41 of my cycle and nitrities are still sky high, 25+ ppm.

 

A little background on my tank, 45g started with dry rock (Caribsea LifeRock), and dry sand. I dosed an initial bottle of Dr. Tim's One & Only, and ammonia up to 2ppm. I didn't see nitrites until about day 10. I went through a bottle of Microbacter7, and just recently put in a bottle of BioSpira. Over that time I've dosed ammonia twice up to 2ppm with ammonia dropping within 48 hours. I'm hesitant to dose ammonia again until nitrites start dropping.

 

What should I do? Wait it out? I mean 41 days is a long time! In my past three tanks I've always cycled with One & Only in about 2-3 weeks.

 

Also, for reference before anyone says high nitrites will stall a cycle please read this - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4433873/

Nitrobacter can withstand high nitrites in the 500+ ppm range.

 

 

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I can’t help, but I’m tagging along in a similar boat with the same rock and chemicals used at start-up.

 

I only even doses amm once, and my trites have been sitting at 0.25-0.5 for about 3 weeks now. 

 

I added fish a week ago and a tester Zoa. No visual effects on either from the trites. Ammonia has remained zero on daily testing. I have done 2 %25 water changes since adding the fish but trites have held on. 

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You should wait until you're seeing a complete quick conversion from Ammonia to Nitrate (within 24 hours, or sooner). Nitrite can be the stall a lot of the time, the bacteria has to build in order to convert from Nitrite to Nitrate. It's important to have a consistent food source for the bacteria similar to what you will have when you start adding love stock. You can accomplish this several ways but for example, if you plan to add 1 small fish and you expect to feed a small ping of food per day, you can do that now to keep the bacteria fed and build up the right amount of bacteria for when you add the first inhabitants.

 

It looks like you've adding a lot of starter bacteria but I believe the general rule is a bottle at start and a bottle once the cycle is complete, or something along those lines (Dr. Tims). If you keep adding bacteria and there is nothing for it to eat it'll die, convert to ammonia and continue your cycle but it's probably better to continue adding some ammonia source each day to increase your Ammonia converting bacteria. Once the Nitrite converting bacteria get established, everything will happen pretty quickly. 

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50 minutes ago, JavaJacketOC said:

You should wait until you're seeing a complete quick conversion from Ammonia to Nitrate (within 24 hours, or sooner). Nitrite can be the stall a lot of the time, the bacteria has to build in order to convert from Nitrite to Nitrate. It's important to have a consistent food source for the bacteria similar to what you will have when you start adding love stock. You can accomplish this several ways but for example, if you plan to add 1 small fish and you expect to feed a small ping of food per day, you can do that now to keep the bacteria fed and build up the right amount of bacteria for when you add the first inhabitants.

 

It looks like you've adding a lot of starter bacteria but I believe the general rule is a bottle at start and a bottle once the cycle is complete, or something along those lines (Dr. Tims). If you keep adding bacteria and there is nothing for it to eat it'll die, convert to ammonia and continue your cycle but it's probably better to continue adding some ammonia source each day to increase your Ammonia converting bacteria. Once the Nitrite converting bacteria get established, everything will happen pretty quickly. 

You're right, I'll continue to dose ammonia to maintain and grow the bacteria population. I don't quite want to add any fish yet, as I don't want to kill anything.

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High nitrites (+5ppm) can stall a cycle. 

 

The graph below is my cycle. My Nitrite test kit only went up to 5ppm, but you can see on day 6 they shot up. At the same time my nitrates kept going up even with a 1.5G (~25%) water changes. I did an 80% WC on day 10 and waited for the nitrites to go down to 0 before dosing any more ammonia. Then dosed up to 2ppm ammonia, and the nitrites took another 5 days to get down to 0. After that, I was able to process 2ppm of ammonia fully into nitrates after day 21. If I remember correctly, after day 23 it could process 2 ppm of ammonia to nitrates in 12 hours. 

 

Do a large water change (up to 80% or more) to get your nitrites down. Then keep dosing ammonia up to 2ppm. Don't dose ammonia again until the nitrites are below 1ppm and if the nitrites go above 5ppm do a waterchange to get them back down. Maintain this until you can process 2ppm of ammonia into nitrates under 24 hours (some say 12) and you are good to go.

 

58f3a1414c582_ScreenShot2017-04-16at9_49_13AM.png.8b52c4fb59106f9dc8c110ee022cacbd.png

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I'm not sure I agree with nitrites stalling a cycle....the ability to convert from nitrite to nitrate is an important part of the process and having sufficient bacterial loads for each stage of the cycle is important to prevent spikes in a newly established tank.

 

I wouldn't worry about it, I would continue adding small doses of ammonia and test every couple days. You can do a water change to remove excess nitrites but the bacteria population is still going to have to be build up in order to maintain a balanced cycle. I think the example SaltyBuddha provided is a fair option but when I've cycled tanks, nitrite has always been the longest stage of the process...sometimes two or three weeks. 

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1 hour ago, JavaJacketOC said:

I'm not sure I agree with nitrites stalling a cycle....the ability to convert from nitrite to nitrate is an important part of the process and having sufficient bacterial loads for each stage of the cycle is important to prevent spikes in a newly established tank.

 

I wouldn't worry about it, I would continue adding small doses of ammonia and test every couple days. You can do a water change to remove excess nitrites but the bacteria population is still going to have to be build up in order to maintain a balanced cycle. I think the example SaltyBuddha provided is a fair option but when I've cycled tanks, nitrite has always been the longest stage of the process...sometimes two or three weeks. 

Three weeks? You’re wrong. 

 

Everytning you you need to know re: a cycle.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/

High ammonia and or trites will slow things down. 

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There are sources that say high nitrites does stall the cycle. Others say it doesn't. 

 

Regardless, even Dr. Tim's instructions say to do water changes if ammonia or nitrite get above 5ppm. They also state it could slow the cycle.

 

https://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources/fishless-cycling

 

My 10g cycle probably would have lasted 40+ days if I did not do water changes to reduce nitrites.

 

 

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42 minutes ago, 1891Bro said:

Three weeks? You’re wrong. 

 

Everytning you you need to know re: a cycle.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/

High ammonia and or trites will slow things down. 

 

Definitely possible that I experienced a "stall" mentioned in the sources provided, I hadn't seen either of these documents before. I did experience a 19 day timeline for nitrites to completely convert to nitrate two tanks ago. Maybe not the norm and possibly "stalled" but I'm not sure how my personal experience could be considered wrong. 

 

Thanks for the link.

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45 minutes ago, JavaJacketOC said:

 

Definitely possible that I experienced a "stall" mentioned in the sources provided, I hadn't seen either of these documents before. I did experience a 19 day timeline for nitrites to completely convert to nitrate two tanks ago. Maybe not the norm and possibly "stalled" but I'm not sure how my personal experience could be considered wrong. 

 

Thanks for the link.

Agreed. Stalled because of high trites. 

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41 days?! Damn, those Nitrites def stalled. I remember mine were sky high and didn’t go down for a week and a half. Then one day, zeroed out. 

 

Just leave it be and let it’s do it’s thing.

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Hmmm I have not seen a nitrite test kit that goes over 5ppm let alone to 25??? I mean yes nitrate test kits go higher but that is normal and the nitrates will only be removed via water changes unless you use some other removal source like macro alage.. are you sure you are testing high nitrites??? 

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1 hour ago, Weikel said:

Hmmm I have not seen a nitrite test kit that goes over 5ppm let alone to 25??? I mean yes nitrate test kits go higher but that is normal and the nitrates will only be removed via water changes unless you use some other removal source like macro alage.. are you sure you are testing high nitrites??? 

I diluted my tank water 4:1 with RO water and they still showed at 5+ on my API test. I also diluted 10:1 and it still showed 5+ so my nitrites must be like 50+. 

I test straight RO/DI water and it's 0. I'm stumped...

 

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Weird.. If you know your test kit is good I would do a huge wc as close to 100 percent and then let it sit for a day then test again.. then dose a super small amount of nh3 again and see what happens... 

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Just wanted to give everyone a quick update.

 

I performed two 10 gallon water changes over the weekend, and by Sunday my nitrites had gone from 5ppm+ to 0.25ppm. Monday morning I was at 0ppm, so I dosed 1ppm ammonia and it was converted to nitrate within 24 hours. I've performed two digestion tests over the last two days and it all converts within about 12 hours now. So my cycle is complete!

 

I'm going to hold out a few days, perform another 20g w/c, and get my chaeto reactor on-line. This weekend I'll be picking up my first fish (purple firefish), and some trochus snails!

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1 hour ago, ReefGoat said:

With such a new tank and small bio load. You aren't afraid you're going to strip the tank of nutrients by putting on that chaeto reactor so soon? 

You have a good point, I haven't thought about balancing my imports and exports yet. I figure if I can get ahead of nussaince algae growth I'll be set up for success, and continue to grow chaeto until I can balance the nutrients in/out. I know if I run chaeto now my nitrates will be very low to 0.

 

When do you suggest bringing my chaeto reactor online?

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1 hour ago, BOMBreef said:

You have a good point, I haven't thought about balancing my imports and exports yet. I figure if I can get ahead of nussaince algae growth I'll be set up for success, and continue to grow chaeto until I can balance the nutrients in/out. I know if I run chaeto now my nitrates will be very low to 0.

 

When do you suggest bringing my chaeto reactor online?

I'm still learning. I don't have a suggestion. I'm sorry lol, my comment was more of a question. I had stripped my 45g of nutrients unknowingly and being afraid of algae myself. I was running my skimmer 247, feeding sparingly and doing militant water changes along with dosing a few drops of microbacter7 daily. Within a month and a half after my cycle was complete my nutrients both bottomed out to 0. Wasn't long after that and I started seeing what I think was a mixture of Dino and diatoms. The diatoms were because of something stupid that I did. But from my research I think the dino's presented themselves because of my ultra low nutrient environment. That's just my theory. It took a month to get my tank presentable again and I'm now currently taking measures to keep my nutrients detectable.           Edit: to raise my nutrients over a period of about two weeks I dosed seachem flourish every other day and tested on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I also upped my feedings. 

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For now I'm striving to keep around 5-10 nitrate and anywhere from 0.05-0.10 phosphates. For instance they were a little higher than I'd like tonight and I'm running my skimmer passively overnight to try and get them back down. It's only a 4 month old tank that's in the process of being stocked slowly. So it'll prolly take me a while to get it balanced out.

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1 hour ago, BOMBreef said:

When do you suggest bringing my chaeto reactor online?

While my tank is only a month old, I turned my chaeto reactor on two weeks ago, post cycle. What I learned is that chaeto is extremely efficient at removing nitrate from the water column. My nitrates were 10ppm after my first 75% water change. From there, the chaeto brought it down to 0ppm in a week. 

 

I’m also monitoring phosphate, and nitrate’s roll in phosphate level reduction. While my nitrate was reducing, so was my phosphate. When my nitrate was 0ppm, my phosphate increased slightly. While I wait for my Tailspot Blenny to get out of quarantine, I am dosing Brightwell Aquatics NeoNitro. I am trying to maintain 2ppm nitrate until I increase the bio load. 

 

Is all all of this necessary? Probably not, but I’m having fun building bio diversity and micro fauna. As a comparison, here is my lump of chaeto when I put it in, here it is after 2.5 weeks.

 

45973973095_6463fda6f8_c.jpg

 

39968793733_4c79cb55b0_c.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

I’m 40 days into my cycle, and I’m too am experiencing sky high nitrites and nitrates. And that’s with dry rock and dry sand. Ammonia was dosed to 2ppm. At least that’s what the ammonia test kit indicated. I think now my ammonia test kit was grossly under reporting. Given the nitrite and nitrate that come later, I either dosed too much or something was in the rock rotting. I geniuinly don’t know. 

 

Anyway, yesterday I took a sample of tank water to my lfs. The clerk said no ammonia, acceptable nitrite and sky high 100+ nitrates. I questioned the nitrite reading, but the clerk insisted my nitrites were ok. It was recommend I do a 50% wc. It did that today. Hours later MY nitrite kit still say it’s off the chart dark purple high. Nitrates halved to 50-60. I’ll leave it a week.

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Yes, will do.  That’s what I’ve been waiting on for some time. 

 

The last ammonia addition was about 30 days ago, I stopped when nitrites first appeared. I stopped testing ammonia after day 10. But it must have continued to go up and up and up. 

 

The 50% wc removed a lot of waste. Nitrites will hopefully come down on there own now. If not I guess I’ll do another 50% wc next weekend. Before I do that I’ll take a water sample to the lfs. 

 

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