Fishless cycle stopped dead in it's tracks

[Munky]

Hi everybody,

My fishless cycle appears to have stopped in it's tracks. Everything has been running great, bringing ammonia to 4ppm daily and having it return to zero every 24 hours. Today, however, my reading was at 3ppm at midday and 7:30 this evening. Nitrites are off chart as are nitrates.

Oh, and we are into day 12. What do you reckon?

Cheers guys!

Nathan.

[joz]

Let it keep going, it will settle and balance itself.l

[Munky]

Still at 3ppm... Could this indicate a problem? It's been sitting there for 4 days now.

[mr_walker]

Check the carbonate hardness (KH) and the PH. The cycle will consume all available buffers in your tank if you're not careful, and you'll have a PH crash (i.e. low KH -> low PH).

I had this problem when I did my first fishless cycle, and my PH crashed to below 6 (or off the scale of my test kit). Solution is to either do partial water changes to put more buffers in the tank, or add a small amount of sodium bicarb. From then on I used to keep an eye on my KH and try to maintain it at a stable level.

Cheers,

Walker

[Munky]

Thanks mr walker...what you have suggested appears to be the case. I cannot confirm the status of my KH (I just used my last hardness test strip) but PH was <6.0. Added some PH Up, back to about 6.8.

Do the bacteria die at a certain PH reading, or go in to some sort of "hibernation" state? :(