Ughhh....Lady Hobbs was right......

["the"Trinity]

Our 10gal. beginner freshwater tank has not cycled. After seeing that our Corys were somewhat lethargic this morning, we decided to take some water to PetSmart and have it tested. They used a strip-style Master Test Kit and came out with the following:

Ammonia - 1.0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
pH - 6.8
Hardness - 25

Now - several weeks ago we had a slight reading of Nitrates - but this has apparently been reversed by something recently and we have also had a big spike of Ammonia. We purchased a liquid-style Ammonia test kit and brought it home to confirm our suspicions. The oh-so-more-accurate drip/test tube-style test showed us the worst - our Ammonia was 4ppm and very dark green.

We have at 8PM just completed three consecutive 25% water changes over the past four hours. Ammonia is currently down to 1ppm or thereabouts.

Looks like we're back to square one I guess with no bacteria and high Ammonia. Probably adding the 4 Corys caused the big Ammonia. All fish are doing well and feeding well so they're not really in a stressed state as far as we can ascertain because our pH is acidic (6.5).

PetSmart of course suggested we add some of their snake-oil "Bacterial Supplement" to get our cycle started off again - but given that it is not refrigerated we've discounted that. Considering adding some actual Bio-Spira to our establised tank. Thoughts/advice?

Needless to say - we intend to make sure that our new 10gal. tank for our DPs that are on order will be cycled well before introducing them to the tank - intending on adding a couple of Otos and Bio-Spira this week sometime.

TT

[markbob]

Man, you might as well just buy the whole master test kit. Once the NH3 goes down then you have to start looking for the NO2 spike and then the NO3 spike. You might as well be prepared to test for all of them.

[Lady Hobbs]

It doesn't take much to loss your cycle on the small tanks. Disturbing the gravel with too much cleaning or changing out the filter media would do it for you unless you've had a good steady cycle going for some time and it's pretty mature.

Good thing you had your water checked and you did good to do those water changes.

[RichBowyer]

Crap happens. Your response was very good!

[digital3]

Don't feel too bad. It takes hard work to get all of this figured out (and unfortunately, some dead fish also). I just lost a few this week myself. Don't give up. Just keep researching.

[elmer]

PetSmart of course suggested we add some of their snake-oil "Bacterial Supplement" to get our cycle started off again - but given that it is not refrigerated we've discounted that. Considering adding some actual Bio-Spira to our establised tank. Thoughts/advice?I hear Bio-Spira works. Seachem Stability worked perfectly on my fishless cycle. Main advice I tell everyone is - bacteria can be killed - usually by starvation or chlorine/chloramine.

["the"Trinity]

Thanks guys for the support! :thumb: I figured I'd be battered about the head for not doing a fishless cycle - but all of this bacterial cycling art was news to us when starting our 10gal.

I'm glad that we did the right thing and did a REAL ammonia test - and commenced frequent water changes. I am going home today at lunchtime and will test again. If it is high I may attempt a water change while eating lunch LOL. We only fed once yesterday and today we will cut down on feeding for a little while.

Thanks again for all of the advice - going tonight to get some Bio-Spira for our new tank and possibly for this problem tank, too!

We haven't lost any fish yet so at least we must be doing SOMETHING right! I just don't understand how we lost our bacteria reading that we had......hmmmmm.

TT

["the"Trinity]

Well I don't know what's going on LOL.

I just tested (admittedly with some strips today as I didn't have time to do the whole dropper thing) at lunchtime today.

Ammonia - Somewhere between .25-.50
Nitrate - Trace (NOT zero)

Hmmmmm......will monitor. It would be nice to think that we are now having some Nitrate showing.

TT

["the"Trinity]

I think our tank may have stabilized...

This morning's tests indicate ammonia has levelled-off at 1ppm, 0 Nitrites, and 5 Nitrates. No further water changes have been done since I started this thread.

Fingers crossed......

TT

[Dixie]

Sounds good to me but I'm new to this too and going through it. Maybe there's hope for mine yet lol. It's alot of work and headache but hopefully getting through it without loosing any fish will make it worth it. If I ever do another tank, it will surely be cycled fishless.
Congrats,
Dixie

[mitcore]

sounds like you are well on your way to a fully cycled tank
congrats on the already good decreasing results