HELP - Near Paralysis?

[Headstrng]

Good to see you are not deterred, keep us posted on your tanks progress.

Will do. And I was very close to deterred. Cannot have another issue. I'm still puzzled about what happened to my nitrifying bacteria, but will move on.

I'm documenting it via Google Sheet right now...wasn't going to bother the forum with daily postings, but will summarize weekly probably. Right now, my issues have caused me to focus on info gathering, making my own 'Care for a GSP guide' that I hope to be good enough to share. I'll post my daily results in there so people know exactly what to expect from daily readings of a fishless cycle. This info is everywhere, much of it here and scattered throughout the internet, but I'm in marketing and feel GSP owners could really use a comprehensive guide, specific to the GSP. They can go downhill so fast.

All with the goal of saving even just a few puffers from new and struggling, but well-intentioned owners of green spotted puffers.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Only got the ammonia to 4-5ppm yesterday at about 6pm. As of this am, ammonia looks nearly the same (maybe slightly lighter green), nitrite 0ppm, nitrate looks like it got a tad more orange...1-2 ppm. These small changes are tough to tell sometimes. Gotta keep on keepin' on. Checking levels every 12 hours.

[sgtmyers88]

Sorry for your losses. However, I think this will greatly help you on your next attempt
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32416

[bertie 83]

Feel free to update daily or after any change. Or start a thread you can document it in, it will be helpful to many searching the web.

[Headstrng]

Feel free to update daily or after any change. Or start a thread you can document it in, it will be helpful to many searching the web.

I'll keep it in this one then, because I'm not so sure I'll have your standard cycle because I seemed to have gone halfway or killed some nitrifying bacteria off...so I may be somewhat mid-stream. Please feel free to comment if any of you seasoned cyclers seems to know what occurred or is occurring, because it's still somewhat of a mystery. Ammonia each day has dropped between 0.5 and 1.0 ppm and there has been no change in Na or Ni.

36-Gallon Bow-front Aquarium, using API liquid tests
4/22 - Added 1 tbsp of ammonia, bringing levels to @ 5ppm. Because I didn't want to go over 5ppm, I did a 4g water change, bringing levels down to:
4.0-4.5 Am, 0 Ni, 1-2ppm Na, 8.0 pH

4/23 - Levels nearly unchanged, though Ammonia looks like a very, very slightly lighter green...but it's still too dark to really tell.
4.0 Am, 0 Ni, 1-2ppm Na, 8.0 pH

4/23 - Ammonia dropped to a lighter green. pH may have dropped a bit too, but that could have been the lesser pH in my WC. No changes in Na or Ni.
3.0 Am, 0 Ni, 1-2ppm Na, 7.8 pH

Sorry for your losses. However, I think this will greatly help you on your next attempt
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32416

Thanks for this. I do have this thread bookmarked, and it will make it into my guide, but I really want to try to do this the longer way right now and understand the process a bit better. I have no fish in the aquarium left to protect, but I'll definitely get this for emergency cases and for my new quarantine I'm doing. Anyone know what product to get if you're brackish in setup? One seems for freshwater, the other salt.

[Headstrng]

Just an update that I continue to measure each day and have not needed to add additional ammonia yet.

Ammonia has gotten down to somewhere between 1-2 ppm now, with only nitrate registering...somewhere between 1-2ppm...I think closer to 1ppm. Its tough to tell how orange the test kit results are, but it's not zero, and nor is ammonia. Both continue to slowly reduce. Not sure if this is common with how it goes, but am continuing on. I'll add ammonia to get it back up to under 4ppm once down to 0.5ppm...for now, we're at light green so it should be bacteria feeding time.

I hope I'm doing this right...fish-less cycling articles all around are not 100% consistent in process, estimated time, amount of ammonia to add, etc. Trying to follow TPF article used, while heeding the warning of other articles to not go above 5ppm ammonia.

So over about a week, I've seen ammonia move from high 4's to what appears to be @ 1.5ppm now, and nitrates went up to about 2.0 ppm a day after adding the ammonia and have stayed pretty consistent since then. No spikes, no real drops. It's less orange than it was....maybe leaning towards 1.0.

EDIT: This article nitrate vs nitrite language was corrected.

[Pufferpunk]

You read the 2 articles we here in our Library? I believe once you see nitrite, you 1/2 the ammonia.

[Headstrng]

You read the 2 articles we here in our Library? I believe once you see nitrite, you 1/2 the ammonia.

Yep, I did read those. But I think my tank wasn't completely starting from scratch...as soon as I added the initial ammonia, 1 day later, I saw nitrate readings of about 2pm...cant really tell exactly, but there definitely was some nitrate beyond normal yellow. Since then, I've watched my ammonia levels have dropped from about 4ppm (dark green) to about 1.0 (light yellow-green) as of this morning. So I added 1/2 tsp ammonia this AM to try to get it to 2ppm, but had to head to work before I could read where that got me back to.

My situation seems to be not an exact fit for the library article...so I researched other fish-less cycling options. I'm primarily using that article in the library, but also Dr. Tim's says wait until 0.5ppm, then bring it back to 3ppm - that once your tank can handle the 3ppm ammonia and 0ppm nitrites in a day, you're cycled.

I'm not even close. It's been a week for about a 3ppm drop.

Other articles used:
http://www.drtimsaquatics.com/resources ... ss-cycling
http://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Fishless-Cycle
http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_fishless.php

Each article seems to vary a bit on if you keep ammonia consistent with your initial readings, wait for @ 1.0ppm ammonia, or wait until zero.

[bertie 83]

You are certainly heading in the right direction, do you know anyone else with an aquarium who could donate a little of their filter guys? Would speed it up for you

[Headstrng]

Crap, I was away from my readings and got nitrate and nitrite mixed up in this last post. After initial ammonia add, I had nitrAte show up, not nitrIte. The nitrite tests have all stayed a consistent blue of 0. No spike, no changes.

Not sure how to speed up. 3 days ago I added a bottle of Tetra Safe Start to the filter to speed it up, still getting nothing. All this after having 10 zebra danios in it for over a month and 2 filters. To say I'm frustrated would be a great understatement. What is happening to my tank doesn't seem to follow the articles...I should see a nitrIte spike at some point but am not. Nitrate won't go down, nitrite won't spike, and ammonia seems to drop about 0.5ppm per day.

I added 15 drops of ammonia yesterday...ammonia went up to 1.5ppm, nitrAte to about 5.0ppm, nitrIte 0.

[Headstrng]

ARG!

So despite my LFS assurance that there was NO difference in the API Saltwater vs Freshwater liquid testing kits, outside of the pH solution provided (and $7), this appears to be incorrect and may be contributing to the issue. I'm just going to ignore my LFS advice from now on.

http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com ... ml#ammonia

Looking at images below, ammonia levels change on the cards...so what I thought was around 4.0ppm ammonia on my kit looks like it is maybe 7.0-ish in fresh. Which may have slowed everything down.





*sighs*

Unsure how to rebound now. I'll go buy a freshwater kit...I don't trust the colors on these, or currency of the cards scanned here. Yet another thing I'll ultimately cover in my guide I'm working on.

[bertie 83]

Yea grab the other kit. Do a massive waterchange and see where you are after a day or two,

[Pufferpunk]

By adding the Safestart, you may have skipped the nitrite stage & are cycled.

[Headstrng]

By adding the Safestart, you may have skipped the nitrite stage & are cycled.

Yeah, I thought that was possible...but I think I'm going to do a heavy water change and add some ammonia this weekend, just to see. If it goes ok, I'll just keep adding enough ammonia to keep bacteria fed while I await a new shipment of GSP's to choose from. The last time I ordered one, they only brought in one so I had no choices...and he was darker and less round than other GSPs I'd seen. Now I know that could have been IPs. I'll be doing a low-dose treatment on IPs when the new one gets in, but still not in a hurry. It's tempting to buy some bright green ones I saw on ebay, but I dunno if it's reputable.

I got a smaller aquarium that I'm going to do a fresh fish-less cycle on, from scratch, and am setting up a consistent camera and lighting to take pictures each day so we'll get to see a comparative of vial colors as the cycle goes on. And scanning each API card (API is sending me a freshwater card, instead of me buying the new kit - awesome customer service BTW) so there is a good comparison of these on the internet.

All this stubbing of toes will be fruitful for the community, eventually.

[Headstrng]

In trying to prepare for any future issues, now that my tank successfully processes ammonia and nitrates appropriately, I wanted to validate something from the library articles on IP's.

Orally: 23mg/pound of body weight x one treatment. This of course would require the fish to be eating or would have to be tube fed.

Amount of mg per pound is an EXTREMELY difficult measurement to get for a GSP, or any Puffer I'd imagine. How does one appropriately dose this for a juvenile that is 1-2"?

[Welch4]

Wow I had no idea the charts for fresh and salt were different. Going to get a sw/reef kit asap. Can't remember what people recommend but I normally soak the intended food with 2 or 3 drops for a few minutes and feed.