&)@?%# fish less cycle is killing me

[bethinak]

I started the tank in May. After many many weeks of careful testing and measuring of ammonia, I had good ammonia cycling! Very good! Nitrites were still very high.

Then my effing filter started leaking. I replaced it, using all the same media and hoped my cycle would maintain! it did, ammonia eaten quickly! Still high nitrite.

I did a partial water change to see if nitrites were dropping at all. I ended up getting air in my filter and when I primed the filter a large quantity of white fibrous material flowed into the tank. Looked like disintegrating paper fibers but I suspect some sort of bacterial growth. It disappeared the next day..

Since this time my ammonia isn't cycling the way it was before, it's clearly doing something on the ammonia alert indicator (which indicates the ammonia is very low) but my test kit isn't showing much fluctuation. Confused as hell because the ammonia alert and the test kit were very close before and now they show,different things.

Please advise. My poor kid is losing patience with his snail tank. He loves his axolotls and would love them in his room.

 

[rachel1]

Your discrepancy with the ammonia readings may be a difference in free ammonia vs. total ammonia. I believe most ammo alerts read free ammonia (more toxic) and the liquid test kits read total ammonia (ammonia + ammonium). Your water conditioner may be converting ammonia to ammonium. Either way, sounds like the filter disturbance threw off your cycle a bit. Try to be patient! The nitrite readings tend to suddenly just drop to zero one day, so keep testing regularly. In the meantime, keep feeding your tank ammonia, and I would avoid water changes, unless you have concerns for the health of your snails. Lowering the nitrite levels is just gonna slow down colonization. In my experience, cold water tanks are ridiculously slow to cycle from scratch compared to my tropical tanks. Hang in there!