Did I Crash My Cycle?

[knyptozoologist]

So after struggling with getting my tank cycling for almost a month, it finally started working magic. I decided last night I should add a bit more ammonia because it had dropped to about .25 ppm and I didn't want to starve my bacteria, but when I went to add a few drops, I accidently added way too much and it jumped my ammonia up to about 8ppm. I VERY QUICKLY did a water change which dropped it to about 4ppm, but I'm just worried I may have crashed my cycle by

a) adding too much ammonia at one time

b) doing a water change

I haven't done a test yet today as I'm about to run out the door to walk my husband to work, but if anyone knows without the current readings if I could have crashed it and if there's anything I can do to prevent it from crashing that would be appreciated. I'll post readings in 30 minutes when I get home.

 

[knyptozoologist]

Last night (before the ammonia disaster) my readings were something like this:

Ammonia: .25 ppm
NitrIte: ~ 5 ppm (off the charts purple)
NitrAte: ~10-20 ppm (the color is so close on the chart)

After ammonia addition:

Ammonia: 4-8+ ppm (D

After water change:

Ammonia: 2-4 ppm

This morning:

Ammonia: 1-2 ppm (probably closer to 2)
NitrIte: Guessing 2-5 (incredibly magenta, doesn't match the chart)
NitrAte: 10-20 ppm

Guessing I didn't crash the cycle, I was just super worried about doing something drastic and wrong last night.

 

[tigmades]

You're right, you didn't crash the cycle. I think it would take a much higher concentration to crash it, and it would occur from altering the pH too much. A high level (around 8ppm) would inhibit further growth, so cycling would slow down but not necessarily crash. You did right in doing a water change to bring the levels down, under 5ppm, as I think that's generally the highest you want to go when doing a fishless cycle.

Here's a trick for having a hard time reading colors that don't match the chart: add another 5ml of tank water to the mixture (assuming it calls for 5ml of water before you add solution drops). I'm lucky to have a 15ml container from another test kit, and this dilutes it in half. DO NOT double the total volume, as you shouldn't add more water to account for the drops of solution added in. If it reads 2ppm, then multiply that by two, as your solution will read half of what it should.

 

[knyptozoologist]

Oh cool, I'll have to try that the next time I take readings since a lot of them are getting to the similar colors now.

 

[knyptozoologist]

So I did another test today and the results are EXACTLY the same as yesterday...does this mean I've stalled or slowed down the cycle and is there any way I can "jump start" it again? I hesitate to do anything hasty and make it worse.

 

[tigmades]

Here's an unfinished chart of when I was cycling my big subadult tank and my smaller juvie tank. The blanks are from running out of test solutions, but as you can see it stays the same for quite some time! I changed water daily anywhere from 30-50%, sometimes as much as 80%. This was also with me cycling with them in a kick-started tank (but not kick started too well, as I didn't have much of an ammonia source)



Edit: Whoops, looks like it's not going to post... give me a sec, willl screenshot

 

[knyptozoologist]

I ended up doing another water change last night and checked the levels....all were readable (I can't remember off the top of my head what they were) but either way....

I checked the levels today and my nitrItes are at 0!

I'm going to say my cycle is still good and kicking and will keep (slowly now that I found a small syringe) dosing my ammonia until I get a change to add my axies!

:3

Thanks for all the help from everyone and anyone that's been suggesting things during this struggle!

 

[knyptozoologist]

I'm sure I'm just being paranoid, but after everything seemed to be moving along nicely, it seems to have stopped again. The last three days my readings were as follows:

Ammonia: 1 ppm
NitrIte: 0 ppm
NitrAte: 5 ppm

Either nothing is happening, or the few shrimps I have in the tank are putting out a ton of ammonia and it's being broken down to nitrAte so fast there's no nitrItes showing up, but something about that seems unlikely.

 

[tigmades]

Nitrite takes twice as long to peak than ammonia (takes twice as long as ammonia bb to have a high enough population to deal with nitrites), so I doubt it.

Did you seed the tank with anything? It's not uncommon to take 6 weeks to cycle without seeding.

 

[knyptozoologist]

A friend gave me some gravel from her tank that I suspended in a net near my filter.

 

[tigmades]

Okay so what this appears/could be:

You recently added more ammonia than normal? Because what I'm thinking is that you started a mini-cycle in a cycled tank; aka the tank was able to deal with x ammonia to convert to x nitrite to convert to x nitrate. However now that there's 2x ammonia, there's still only x available to convert it to nitrite and x available to convert to nitrate. That's the only reason I could think why your nitrites are at 0 and your ammonia isn't. This is what happens when people add too many fish to a cycled tank all at once