cycling tank one fish not eating
That’s because the pH and temperature levels play a major role in the toxicity of ammonia. If you have a water temp of 80F and a pH of 8.0, then even 0.25ppm of ammonia can be dangerous whereas with a pH of 7.0, you wouldn’t have the same concerns until the ammonia reaches 2.0ppm. Regardless, as long as you have a pH of 7.0, you should still keep the ammonia at 1.0ppm or less. If you had a pH of 8.0, then you would have to keep it less than 0.25ppm. Here’s a page that fully explains this effect. http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/AmmoniaTox.html
Using a water treatment like Prime will lessen or eliminate the effect of the ammonia and if you add a pinch of salt per 10G, that will help with the nitrite poisoning when you start to get your nitrite spike.
You could technically keep the ammonia lower than 1.0ppm but it would take you longer to fully cycle the tank. The nitrifying bacteria (the good ones that eat the ammonia and nitrite) are opportunistic breeders and will only grow their colony size large enough to handle the ammonia/nitrite being produced by the ecology of your tank. In actuality, a fully stocked tank creates around 4-5ppm of ammonia each day which is why fishless cycling uses that threshold as the level to fishless cycle a tank. Since you have fish, you don’t want your ammonia levels reaching that level but you need some ammonia to feed the N-bacteria so they will start growing the right size colony in your filters. Once you have a large enough colony to handle the 1.0ppm, then you will slow down your PWC’s so that the fish will build up the ammonia to 1.0ppm again. In actuality, the fish might be putting out 2.0ppm but the N-bacteria are eating 1.0ppm and since there is still another 1.0ppm, they continue growing their colony until they are handling the 2.0ppm. Then you would slow down your PWC’s until the ammonia reaches 1.0ppm again, etc., etc., until you have a large enough colony to handle all of the ammonia from your current fish bioload.
If you add more fish, all of a sudden, there is more ammonia and you might have to do PWC’s until the N-bacteria grow their colony larger to handle the increased bioload.
This is why it’s important to NOT trash your filters during your cycling process. I have a long article about Filter Maintenance & Cleaning on my blog.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to articles referenced above listed on the right side under Archives - Year, Month and under Labels)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
