[APD] Hiccup

[Stuart Halliday <stuart at mytriops_com>]

I believe Paul Krombholz wrote this email section below:
> Can you be sure that the Safestart did it?

What else?

>  What if you hadn't added the Safestart?

Then I'd still have ammonia.

I've performed 3 fishless test cycles with this tank and equipment 
previously and each time I've first bleached them for 6 hours. Took weeks 
for the initial ammonia to go away.

>  Would there have been still 1ppm of ammonia 15 hours later?

Sure.

> Also, where did it go?  If the Safestart had nitrifying bacteria, presumably
> they would have converted the NH3 to NO3.

Not if the tablets helped converting it? It could be that Safestart contains 
   a nitrate reducing bacteria as well? (Bacillus subtilis?).

>  I am assuming you did not have
> any plants in the aquarium that would have taken up the nitrate.  

That's right - just substrate and the internal filter.


Last night at 8pm I added 2ppm of ammonia as 1ppm seems to get absorbed 
within 15 hours. This afternoon at 1pm I had 1ppm left with 0.5 ppm of 
nitrite and almost 5ppm of nitrate.

This evening it is still ammonia levels at 1ppm with 0.5ppm of nitrite with 
~5ppm of nitrate. So something has happened. I'll leave it like this for 24 
hours. It could have became stuck.

We do know that high levels of ammonia can inhibit the Nitrosococcus sp. and 
high nitrites does the same for Nitrospira sp..The safestart bottles warns 
against adding too many fish or feeding too much initially.


Any one know how much ammonia a 15cm (safestart estimate) fish gives off? A 
lot less than 2ppm perhaps?

Adding 2ppm in one go was probably a mistake.

I'll leave it for 24 hours and see if readings improve. This happened to me 
during a normal fishless cycle with adding bacteria from a mature internal 
filter sponge. Once I got high nitrites the cycle froze until I diluted the 
high nitrites. But that was with nitrites in the 5ppm range.

All good learning experience.

-- 
Stuart Halliday
http://mytriops.com/
200 Million years in the making...
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