Cycling help

[Alisha]

I hope I am posting in the right thread. Newish here and first time posting. I have had the absolute worst time cycling my tank but it’s finally done aside from lowering my nitrates. I have been doing a 50% percent water change daily for just over a week now with very little difference being made. Decided to test my tap water and it has 10ppm nitrates. I realized I am probably always going to be chasing nitrates because of this and felt it best to start using bottled spring water. My tank is 29 gallons if that matters. For the past two days I have pulled out 10 gallons from my tank and replaced with 10 gallons of spring water and it’s still not making much of a difference. Does anyone have any suggestions at this point? Should I just continue buying spring water and do larger changes daily until I get it within safe ranges?

 

[JM29]

Hi,
First, is your tank planted ?
A heavily planted tank can help get rid of nitrates (and also most aquatic plants prefer consuming directly ammonium).
Floating rapid-growing plants are particularly efficient.

I have to deal with a tap water with 25 ppm nitrates.
With a lot of Egeria, Ceratophyllum and Lemna, I was near zero within 1 week and the plants are growing very well (I regularly throw out a little each week)

 

[Alisha]

Hi,
First, is your tank planted ?
A heavily planted tank can help get rid of nitrates (and also most aquatic plants prefer consuming directly ammonium).
Floating rapid-growing plants are particularly efficient.

I have to deal with a tap water with 25 ppm nitrates.
With a lot of Egeria, Ceratophyllum and Lemna, I was near zero within 1 week and the plants are growing very well (I regularly throw out a little each week)

As much as I would like live plants I have a black thumb. So only fake silk plants here currently.

 

[WaterLily05]

As much as I would like live plants I have a black thumb. So only fake silk plants here currently.

You might consider floating plants. Much easier than planted plants. Duckweed or azolla (fairy moss) would be great easy choices. Low light and will suck up those nitrates like crazy. Many people who struggle to keep house plants or a garden alive often have great success with planted aquariums. The biggest thing is choosing plants that will do well in your setup when it comes to lighting and nutrients. For example, my axolotl tank hasn’t got a light, so I chose amazon swords, Anubias, duckweed, and azolla. All low light options. I will have 3 axolotls in my tank by the time its all setup, which is a rather high bio load. So the plants will have lots of nitrates and ammonia to eat up. In my other tank though, I have a school of Pygmy Cories and tons of plants. They DONT have enough nutrients so I supplement them with root tabs and flourish.

 

[Alisha]

You might consider floating plants. Much easier than planted plants. Duckweed or azolla (fairy moss) would be great easy choices. Low light and will suck up those nitrates like crazy. Many people who struggle to keep house plants or a garden alive often have great success with planted aquariums. The biggest thing is choosing plants that will do well in your setup when it comes to lighting and nutrients. For example, my axolotl tank hasn’t got a light, so I chose amazon swords, Anubias, duckweed, and azolla. All low light options. I will have 3 axolotls in my tank by the time its all setup, which is a rather high bio load. So the plants will have lots of nitrates and ammonia to eat up. In my other tank though, I have a school of Pygmy Cories and tons of plants. They DONT have enough nutrients so I supplement them with root tabs and flourish.

Thanks for the plant suggestions. I am going to look into them.

 

[Quinn58]

Hi a few things to consider would be import verses export of nitrates in your system, if your feeding heavily into it it will generate a lot more so you should consider that if you will have a high verses low bio load for your final stocking. While around zero is usually the goal you should figure out your personal acceptable range, and what is needed for the animals your keeping and shoot for that chasing zero is a bit rough for a new tank the longer its running the more stable parameters will get and the easier it will be to get it under control. Buying water isn't a great long term solution you may want to look into a reverse osmosis system if its a big concern for you. There are some filtration methods that claim they can remove it If you want to geek out over it you could look into anoxic, and anaerobic filtration methods. Otherwise pothos is a popular plant that could help you. All you would have to do is make a cutting let the cutting sit for a day or two to let the wound callus over then stick the steam in the tank with at least one root node in the water, it should then start to grow and take in nutrients. Its a supper easy plant commonly available and cheep.

 

[Alisha]

Hi a few things to consider would be import verses export of nitrates in your system, if your feeding heavily into it it will generate a lot more so you should consider that if you will have a high verses low bio load for your final stocking. While around zero is usually the goal you should figure out your personal acceptable range, and what is needed for the animals your keeping and shoot for that chasing zero is a bit rough for a new tank the longer its running the more stable parameters will get and the easier it will be to get it under control. Buying water isn't a great long term solution you may want to look into a reverse osmosis system if its a big concern for you. There are some filtration methods that claim they can remove it If you want to geek out over it you could look into anoxic, and anaerobic filtration methods. Otherwise pothos is a popular plant that could help you. All you would have to do is make a cutting let the cutting sit for a day or two to let the wound callus over then stick the steam in the tank with at least one root node in the water, it should then start to grow and take in nutrients. Its a supper easy plant commonly available and cheep.

Thank you. This is all great information.