I got my daughter a red ryukin and a 10 gallon tank for her third birthday. Well, her birthday is in a few days, but we brough Dennis home on May 1st. Anyway, I thought I was doing everything right, pH is 7.8, been changing the water to keep ammonia below 1 ppm, keeping the tank not too hot, not too cold, etc. I kept at it for 20 days without seeing a single sign that the ammonia was going down and the nitrites were going up so I asked for help.

Based on advice given here at Koko's, I changed from an UGF to a Biowheel. I also tried raising my temperature from 68º to a more balmy 74º. I even tried some of the bacteria starter stuff. I thought for sure that would do the trick. Now it's been another week plus since I made those changes, and I checked the water and still not a single sign of a nitrite to be seen!

So I'm wondering if perhaps chlorine in my water is killing bacteria before they get a chance to grow. Before I began this I called my water company and they said they do not use chloramine but use 4 ppm of chlorine gas in the water. So I have been using this Start Right stuff. It says that it makes chlorinated water safe immediately. So I've been putting a splash of it in the bottom of my new water bucket, turning off our soft water system, and filling the bucket with hard water. I assumed, since the bottle says "Immediately" that's what it means, so I fill the bucket, carry it up to the tank and pour it in.

Do you think that immediately means "less than 24 hours" or something? Or is it truly dechlorinated instantly? The thing I can't understand is how 1 mL of this stuff can instantly dechlorinate 2 gallons of water! It's like putting a drop of food coloring in the ocean and expecting to see it turn the world's oceans green.

So I need some advice. What do you all do to dechlorinate your chlorinated water? Am I doing this right, or have I been killing off my own bacteria for the past month? I can't believe my tank hasn't even started to cycle in that time.

I've used stress coat, and recently prime. Prime is very good, you get a lot of dechlorinated water from it. It also says EXACTLY how much chlorine it removes. If your water company told you how much chlorine gas they used, then you could use prime to get rid of exactly that much. Also, letting the water sit out for a day will let most of the toxins evaporate. That's all I can tell you.... of course, someone else probably knows more than I do, so....

Yes, dechlorinators work immediately.

As usual Jungle doesn't list their ingredients on their webset. Does it say on the bottle how much a standard dose handles?

Pheno's right that chlorine will gas out if the water is left sitting out for a day.

So the biowheel's only been on the tank a week?
Did you leave the gravel in the tank?
(A lot of goldie people recommend going bare bottom with a HUB filter, but I love my UGF. I think it's a great biofilter if it's kept well vacuumed.)

Biospira frmo Marineland would help or seeding the tank from a cycled tank. If you have the lighting, adding plants should also bring in the biobugs to some extent.

It says 1 tsp (5 mL) will dechlorinate 10 gallons. So when I do a 2 gallon change I put in 1 mL (hard to measure, so I just splash about that much in the bottom, erring on the liberal side slightly). But I was thinking, if the splash is on the bottom of the bucket, then how does the final drop of water get dechlorinated? If I carry it up and plop it in the tank, it seems I might be mixing good with bad. I don't sit and stir the bucket up, just put in my Start Right, pour water into the bucket, and pour into the tank. Should I be stirring it all up or something?

And yes, the wheel's been in a little over a week, but the tank's been running (with gravel from the old UGF) for a month now and I have yet to see even 1 ppm of nitrite.

There are no plants, just plastic plants and such. The only living thing in that tank is Dennis. And I truly mean that. I don't think there's anything alive in the water, bacteria or anything, just Dennis and 10 gallons of pristine water that refuses to support bacterial life! I'm still working on it, but it just seemed like maybe the chlorine in my water, if I was dechlorinating it incorrectly, was maybe killing it off before it could start.

Yes, chlorine does kill off biobugs so if you were dechlorinating incorrectly then it would certainly prevent the cycle from starting up. However, I don't think you ARE dechlorinating incorrectly: the instructions you're following sound right to me. I do not know how such a tiny amount of dechlor manages to neutralise every atom of chlorine in just a quick stir, but somehow it does! Incidentally, the way I use dechlor is to add it to the bucket while I am filling from the tap - that mixes it completely before it goes in the tank.

Nitrite does sometimes take a good while to appear - it can take up to two or three weeks. The various types of bacteria involved in the cycling process are fairly finicky and can take a while to settle down and get going with their colonies.

I think what might have happened is that by changing the filter you re-started the cycle from scratch again, which is why it is taking longer than expected for the tank to cycle.

However, it is worth checking the other water parameters too: you mentioned you switched off the softener system you were using: if you suddenly changed the water hardness dramatically (which may also have altered the pH significantly), then that would also affect bacterial growth. Can you test the pH from the tap and again after it has been in your tank for a few days?

Naw, I'd bet pouring the water in the bucket stirs it up enough.

Given you have a pretty high dose of chlorine, I'd switch to a dechlorinator that tells you how much chlorine/chloramine it detoxes so you can be sure it's enough. AP's Tap water conditioner is good. It is very concentrated, uses sodium thiosulfate for chlorine/chloramine and also detoxes heavy metals.

So do you have any mom and pop pets stores around that have a clue?
Back when I was cycling a tank from scratch and didn't have anything to seed it from, I got a mom and pop pet store to sell me some gravel from one of their established tanks. It really sped things up. That's kinda risky tho. Biospira would be better if you can get ahold of some.

No, unfortunately, no mom-and-pop shops anywhere that I know of. The best thing I have is a PetSmart nearby. Other than that, if I want fish, I need to go buy a fishing license.

As for the hardness, I always bypass my softener to get hard water for the tank. The pH is and has been a very constant 7.8.

But I would have thought changing the filter wouldn't have started the cycle up again, since the bacteria in a UGF live in the stones, right? I still have those same stones in the tank. The only thing that was removed was the undergravel plates. So I would have thought that after a month I would have seen something.

I'm trying to be patient, but I also don't want to go another month and be in the same boat I am now. So I have been thinking of things I might be doing wrong and dechlorination came to mind.

Is 4 ppm chlorine high? I have no clue. I don't have any chlorine testing stuff. Maybe to set my mind at ease I should pick some up. Then I would be able to test the water in the tank, and the water I add to the tank, to see if I'm killing off my own bacteria.

Yes, the bacteria that were growing on the gravel are still there. however, your biofilter bacteria like areas with high oxygen levels, so the top layer of gravel should be ok as long as there isn't a lot of debris. Here's a summary I put together on the biofilter bacteria from Dr Tim Hovanec who did his dissertation on the biofilter bacteria. Links to his articles are at the bottom of the page.

Yea... that's probably on the high end of things:
From: http://c3.org/chlorine_issues/disinfection/c3white2003.html
"EPA’s maximum residual disinfection levels (MRDLs) are 4 mg/l for chlorine,"

According to Roddy Conrad, when dosing with, you need 3.5 parts sodium thiosulfate to 1 part chlorine. (The pond folks often buy powdered ST cuz it's cheaper. The same chemical in the Jungle Product, I'd bet).

A chlorine test couldn't hurt since you don't know how much the Jungle product detoxes.

FYI, chlorine acts like nitrIte poisoning in fish. It enters thru the gills and binds up red blood cells keeping them from carrying oxygen.

Excellent info. I have to go to PetSmart today anyway to take back my old powerhead, so while I'm there I'll grab a chlorine test kit. Then I'll prepare the water like I normally do and test to see the chlorine levels. That should answer my question once and for all.

Yep. Good luck.

Well, I bought some Jungle test strips, the only kind of tester they had, came home and ran some tests. Now I am more confused than before.

The test strips have two little patches on them, one for total chlorine and one for free chlorine. Chloramine is measured by the difference of free chlorine to total chlorine. So far so good.

I dipped one in tank water for one second, then held it level as instructed for 15 seconds. The colors showed total chlorine of 0 ppm and free chlorine of 0.5 ppm. First of all, that makes no sense at all.

So I figured I'd test the water at the source, straight from the tap. I figured I'd see the test strips turn bright pink and purple from the high chlorine content of our tap water. I found total chlorine 0 ppm and free chlorine 0.5 ppm! So I poured my bucket of new water, put in some Start Right and found total chlorine 0 ppm and free chlorine 0.5 ppm. So I added in more Start Right and got the exact same reading again!

I think my test strips are somehow screwed up. The bottle says use by December 2006, but I took five tests from tank water, unconditioned bucket water, tap water, conditioned bucket water, and extra conditioned bucket water and got five identical strips!

That is bogus. I'd take them back and complain.
You could do a test. Put a teaspoon of bleach in a cup of water and test that. Should be thru the roof.

From what I've heard strip tests are a lot less reliable than are liquid tests.

Good idea about the bleach. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have any in the house. And I asked about a dropper test kit, but all they had was the strips. I think they're worn out or something because I know there has to be either chlorine or chloramine in our water right from the tap, yet it kept reading like there was nothing in it.

But anyway, I think I may be alright, because it looked like I might have a trace of nitrites in my tank today! I am so excited. I've been good about the water changes so far, so nitrites aren't going to cause me any more work than ammonia did, but at least I know the tank is starting to cycle. Thanks for your help.

Excellent!

Since you're seeing nitrItes, I'd add salt at 1 teaspoon per gallon of water. predissolve in tank water and make sure it disperses well when you add it. You can use table salt as long as it doesn't contain yellow prussiate of soda. Rock salt is cheap and works well. NitrIte is toxic. It enters thru the gills and binds up the red blood cells keeping them from being able to carry oxygen. Salt helps protect against nitrIte poisoning because it competes with nitrIte for uptake thru the gills. After you get it salted, when you do partial water changes just add 1 tsp of salt per gallon changed till nitrItes come down to 0, then you can skip adding any more salt. Your partial water changes will then remove it over time.

Will do with the salt. However I looked around and found a very detailed article that more or less said that 1 tsp per gallon was about a thousand times more than is needed and is healthy for a goldfish.

They more or less said that you have to have 30 times the chloride as nitrite, so at 0.1 ppm nitrite you'd want 3 ppm chloride. Since salt is 60% chloride that's 5 ppm salt. There are 768 teaspoons in one gallon of water so adding 1 tsp per gallon of water is 1300 ppm when the goal was 3 ppm.

Is this article way out to lunch or should the 1 tsp "rule of thumb" be looked at and revised?

Yea, I've read those. I haven't seen any studies on it and since .1% won't hurt, I'd rather be safe than sorry. Just call me chicken.