another cycle-how long may it last?

pallan

pallan

Member
After following some bad advice from LFS i have in advertantly put my 4 month old tank into a cycle. was hoping to see the ammonia start to go down by now but have not seen a change since it spike on tuesday (6 days ago).
two 15 gallon water changes have not helped this week And the LFS and I think we found the cause and have remidied it, but as i said 6 days after the spike and no change in ammionia so im hoping it was fixed.
Question is if it is going to cycle how long might this 2nd cycle run?
Any way to speed it up? (ive added cycle to it allready and LFS has added some live bacteria as well some thing kept in fridge)
Should i continue doing water changes or let the cycle take its course
or is it a cycle is their anything that could cause a false ammonia reading (wishful thinking) two many deaths this week for it to be a false reading.
stats are
ammonia .03
nitrites .01
nitrates 50
ph 8.5
FOWLR 45 gallon my guess would be 20 lbs of live rock
cpr back pack 2 skimmer
ehiem canister filter
2 firefish, engineer goby,
several snails and red and blue leg crabs unkown # left alive since this spike
spike has claimed 2 cleaner shrimp and like i said several snails and crabs possiblly
 
granny

granny

Member
Big problem is it becomes a snowball effect. As livestock die, they contribute to the ammo, NI etc. in your tank. If your remaining livestock can be held somewhere else that would be great because it will take a while to get this cleared up.
Normally when you add new stock to a newer tank, it only takes a week/approx/ to break down new ammo and build up your benfcl bacteria to handle the load increase.
But when stock starts dying, it becomes a desperate attempt to do enough water changes, clean up all the debris-especially anything dead-and not lose what beneficial bacteria you have now.
If you cant move your livestock-then you will probably have to so daily hefty water changes using a siphon, make sure to get anything dead out right away, add some chemical absorption for both ammo and nitrates to the tank. If you have a skimmer, kick it up.
Good luck to you!
 
pallan

pallan

Member
Originally Posted by Jer4916
Did you take mini critters advice?...or safari's?
LOL this post returned from the dead lol thanks granny for the reply issue was resolved months ago.
actaully turned out to not be eithers advice it was a false reading the deaths i had were probably from having to young of a tank and going overboard doing waterchanges on a immature tank trying to get that ammonia level down. The ammonia was a reaction between the phosphate remover and the test kit giving a false positive.
 
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