Water Changes while Cycling?

EthanG

Member
Hey All,

Well, I think I made a mistake when I was tried to get my new tank started. I thought that swapping two established filters from my 5.5g (a 20g rated sponge filter and an AC20) to my new 20g would be good enough to "instant cycle". But what I think happened, was while there was enough physical filtration for the new tank, the old tank had one fish, so the bacteria had only grown enough for the bio-load of that one fish, not a planted 20g and several fish. (Is my thinking correct?)

That aside, I now have high levels of Nitrites, low levels of nitrates and high levels of ammonia. When I discovered the levels a few days after starting the tank and adding some fish, I did a 50% change, then 10 hours later another 50% change. That brought them down to 4.0ppm Ammonia, 5.0ppm Nitrite, 5.0ppm Nitrate. Yes, down, they were worse than that when I first tested. This was July 8th.

I ran out and got some Prime, and started the 7-day Stability + Prime regiment to detoxify the Ammonia/Nitrate/Nitrites (prime every 2 days) and establish some new strains of bacteria (stability every day for 7 days). I am now on day 5 of this regiment.

My question, is should I be doing water changes while going through this process to keep removing Ammonia/Nitrites/trates? Any other recommendations?

I will be doing another water test shortly - I haven't tested since this weekend with my API set, just strips.
 

Cory

Administrator
Staff member
During cycling you don't want any of those to be more than half a part per million. I'd recommend water changing till they are they are that low and not relying on prime to detoxify things.
 

EthanG

Member
During cycling you don't want any of those to be more than half a part per million. I'd recommend water changing till they are they are that low and not relying on prime to detoxify things.
Thanks Cory,

For some reason I didn't realise I should have that low during my cycle, I'll get some water changes going tomorrow.

As for test results...Thankfully my ammonia levels are much lower now 0.2 instead of 4.0 , (huge change... I tested twice to be sure) and my nitrite is also lower by 1 ppm. But nitrate is up a bit.
 

EthanG

Member
Thank you all for the responses. I didn't do huge back-to-back water changes due to a busy schedule, but did a 50% one day and 30% (ish) a day later last week.

I am happy to say my Ammonia levels are now at 0, nitrite is at 0.2ppm and nitrate is at 20ppm. I also tested my tap water just to know what I'm dealing with - 0's across the board, including chlorine.

Question on bacteria - if I had both filters on an old aquarium and moved to this new one, and then started a Seachem Stability routine - will I technically have multiple strains now? Also, do I have to keep dosing seachem to ensure it doesn't die off?
 

pbmax

Active Member
Congrats!

I don't think the number of "strains" really matters. If you've been continually adding stability regularly, then I'd slowly taper it off and watch the ammonia and nitrite levels closely.
 
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