im having trouble cycling my tank. it's been about six weeks and the nitrates still arent there.

i have a 10 gallon with 2 baby bubble eyes. nitrites are down to 0, pH is 7.8, i keep the ammonia down under 2.0 with about two 20% water changes a week. the nitrites have gone down to 0, so i dont understand why the nitrates arent up, why theyre still at 0. weekly i use stess zyme. it's supposed to put in good bacteria. the temp of the tank stays around 77-78F. GH and KH are normal. and have a biowheel 125 on the tank. what should i do? HELP!

(and yes i know they should be in a bigger tank. but i have to wait till we move into the new house)

do you have plants in your tank, they will help get ride of nitrites. also if you do frequent water changes it will help get rid of nitrites. hope to be of some help

SpooN

you could stop doing the water changes and see if you don't get a spike somewhere. it sounds like your tank has cycled. six weeks is plenty of time for the process to occur especially since you are using bacteria suppliments.

Lets see....the ammonia is still at 2.0 unless you change water. The nitrites are at zero and the nitrates are at zero.

You say the nitrites have come down to zero?

Have they been higher than zero at any time?

What levels did they reach?

WHat did the ammonia level do at that time?

Have you ever had nitrates at all?

This is puzzling, but I bet we can figure it out! In six weeks you should be done or so near done that it is days away!

The ammonia should be the FIRST thing to go. Only after the first type of bacteria is processing ammonia do you get nitrites. The nitrites are then processed by the second type of bacteria into nitrates.

It is possible that your first type of bacteria is barely working - just enough to process a tiny bit of ammonia into nitrite - that which you were reading before it dropped to zero. The second type of bacteria is processing the little nitrite it receives from the first type of bacteria, but because it receives so little, it handles it adequately. The nitrate cannot build up because there is so little of it that is it removed past measuring when you change the water. the ammonia builds up because there is not a big enough colony of the first type of bacteria to process it all.

Biowheel is good, temperature is good, pH, kH, and gH are good......hmmmmmm.
(I have never had any success with stresszyme, but perhaps others have).

How are you treating your water before adding it to the tank?

You might want to try Cycle or Bio Spira, I haven't had any luck with Stress Zyme, and a lot of people who I've talked to have said the same.

It took my tank almost 13 weeks to cycle.
I struggled with it endlessly.
With the ammonia that high you want to be careful if you cut down on the water changes.
Are you using something to detoxify the ammonia? If not you probably should. I used a product from Jungle Labs, called Tank Buddies ammonia remover. This helped.
I think your tank will cycle with all that you are doing, it will just take alittle longer than most (like mine did).

As humans we get impatient, so hang in there and it will come eventually.

Good luck

sorry to add questions to daryls post but, here goes:

what brand and make is your ammonia testing equipment?

what type of dechlorinator are you using?

you might just be betting false ammonia readings if your using amquel or amquel plus and a sylycilate based test kit for ammonia.

are you cleaning out the filterbox or changeing out the filter cartridge or anything? if so, dont (unless the cartridge becomes clogged, then just rinse it out in a bucket of tankwater, not tapwater).

as daryl said, this is perplexing. for one, your ammonia should have dropped to 0 a long time ago. nitrites are the real problem because they take so darn long to drop. that why were confused, youve still got ammonia but no nitrites.

post back soon!

thanks to everyone for the replies.

when i do the water changes, i use water that i let sit out overnight, and use aquasafe by tetra to treat it. that's all. i do not use amquel or amquel plus. every two weeks i'll check the filter, if it's clogged i rinse it in fish tank water that i took out with the water change. i use an ammonia test kit by aquarium pharmaceuticals. and for the other tests i have a jungle lab kit.

i dont know if i ever had nitrites in the tank, i didnt buy the 5 in 1 test strips until about after 4 weeks of the ammonia level not going down. so i had to get one to know if the nitrates were growing. all i know is that on the kit, the nitrites are 0, and the nitrates are a very light pink color, so it's i guess between 0-5-10? the test goes by 20's. and no i dont have any live plants, just fakies. the ammonia just wont go away!!!!!!!!

Please help! and im going to look into the products u guys recomended. thanks!

I had the same trouble for 3 to 4 months with one tank.

I tried every bacteria treatment I could get, and they were a total waste of money.

The only jump-start bacteria that has worked for me is BioSpira. But it wasn't available for several months. Does anyone know if it's back on the market yet?

Instead of big daily water changes with my problematic tank, I eventually used AmQuel to keep the ammonia below 1ppm. I used lots more than the recommended dosage daily, too. That went on for about a week. Then nitrItes appeared and quickly got to dangerous levels. I still had ammonia trouble, too. So I switched to AmQuel Plus, and did water changes when the levels got close to 1ppm. AFter about 2 weeks of that, the tank cycled.

Next time I'll go fishless unless I can get BioSpira.

Caroline in San Jose

Perhaps gunk in the rocks/substrate (if there is substrate in the tank) is the source of the problem? Just a suggestion.

no, i only have a few river rocks, mostly a bare bottom. that sounds funny. no really, i only have rocks around 2 plants that i have in there. i guess my tank is just going take a lot longer then most to cycle <_<

thanks for the help, i'll keep u guys updated on the levels of everything

i've been looking on the web for biospira, and havent been having any luck. anything else that someone has used and had good results with? let me know.

Haven't used it myself, but I've heard great things about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available at the moment (Marineland is supposed to be making more to replenish their stock) and I heard from a pet store owner in my area that they'll hopefully be back in stock late August or September. I hope he didn't hear wrong.

Anyway, good luck with your cycling. Mine took months to cycle... and it took me forever to figure out what the problem was... I was using a cheap filter! Upgrading from a Whisper E (which most stores don't even sell) to a Penguin 170 got the cycle going.