My new fish tank has been up for 2 weeks and I have no ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate readings. What do I do?
by Aquaboy on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 | 8 Comments
I’m guessing I just have to wait it out, but I am not sure. I have 3 pristella tetras (x-ray) and they look healthy. 2 of the 3 have really red tails and the other looks OK, just doesn’t have the color in the tail that the others do… I’m guessing I just have to wait for the levels to rise and come down, but I’m not 100% sure… Please help me with any opinions.
Thanks!
My tank is 20 gallons. The test kits don’t expire until March ’09.
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Hi Teddy,
This is rather unusual. You should have seen ammonia first. That should have been detectable after a few days actually. What kind of testing are you using? If you are using dip sticks or strips, I’d check the batch. It’s probably outdated. You really shouldn’t be seeing too much of nitrate at this point so I wouldn’t focus on that. Ammonia should have been cleared or would have been soon, and nitrite should be rather high.
The only thing I can think is you have a bad tester. If you have not seen signs of distress in your fish as well, that’s a positive. Check on the expiration dates on your tester, and if you don’t have already, get a tester that has liquid reagent testing. It’s almost impossible that ammonia is not there. Even if you didn’t feed your fish for the whole two weeks, which I think you wouldn’t have done, ammonia gets into the water also via fish respiration and fish waste, as well as plant decay. You have plenty of sources for ammonia and that should have been showing after just a few days.
The cycle takes about six weeks usually. You just have to wait it out…. Good luck!
what kind of test kit are you using to do the readings? or are you going to the store? if you are going to the store to get the water checked, buy your own test kit. if you are using your own test kit, check the expiry date. use a liquid test kit, not test strips. the strips are notoriously inaccurate.
with fish in that long there should be at least some kind of reading.
How large is the tank? My guess is the three little fish are not going to cycle the tank all that quickly. While it will result in many thumbs down from those who don’t know better and base their opinions on hearsay, things like API StressZyme and Hagen Cycle contain bacteria spores that will reduce cycle time by 20-25%, say instead of 5 weeks, only 4.
I know this for a fact, because it has worked for me, many many times. The key is patience and monitoring.
I agree with the above – 3 little tetra’s might have such a small affect on the water that you won’t even be able to measure it. If they are in anything 10 gallons or more this is certainly what is happening.
This is a good thing. This is the best way to cycle a tank. It’s still cycling, but you’re starting off with a very low bio-load, which means it will take you longer to fully stock the tank, but will also keep your fish healthier along the way.
I would recommend just leaving things be for about 2 to 3 more weeks, and then start stocking up your tank slowly – start off, for instance, by adding 3 more pristellas, and then test your ammonia and nitrites through the week. If at the end of the week everything is clear, you can go ahead and add a few more.
Don’t worry about the one with less colour – fish colour is often dictated by stress, including being the lowest in their little hierarchy. As long as he’s not being picked on and is swimming and eating it’s fine – it will help too when you add more to give them a better school.
As far as those bacteria’s go – some are better then others (in my experience hagen cycle isn’t worth the bottle it comes in), but none of them are as good as adding actual live bacteria to the tank. If you were to take a handful of filter media or gravel from a mature tank and put it into your own filter, the cycle would be instant – the tank would be cycled. I haven’t even needed to cycle a tank in fifteen years because I simply transfer media from one tank to a new one, and start off with an amount of fish that coincides with the amount of media I was able to use.
It is strange not to have anything to read. I would try another test kit. One method I like to use to speed up the cycle is to get clean change water from an established tank and add it to a new one. You can also get a used filter pad that fits your filter and put it in for a couple of weeks. These methods increase the speed of the establishment of biological filtration. These methods transfer bacteria into your tank. Bacteria such as Nitrosomas bacter, which help cycle the Nitrogen. Good luck!
If you have no ammonia, nitrite or nitrate, either your test kits are bad, or your fish are not producing enough ammonia for your kits to detect. How large of a tank is it? How often do you do partial water changes? How much do you change when you do them? If you are concerned about the test kits, bring a water sample to a pet store for them to test. If they detect any of the three, you might want to try a different test kit/different brand. If they don’t detect any either, hold off on doing any water changes until you get some nitrogenous wastes measured on your test kits. It is possible, though not likely, that the bacteria established themselves quickly enough for you to never get a reading of ammonia or nitrite, but you should get a nitrate reading. If the kit cannot measure low enough to detect any nitrate that may be in your tank, you will have to wait for it to rise to be sure the tank is cycled. Just keep testing your water for all three about twice a week until you get something measurable, with your current kits or with new kits if you don’t trust the ones you have.
if you have 3 fish for 2 weeks the ammonia level should have risen and come down already — if you are testing with strips they might be bad.
i am not a big advocate of water testing. you will learn there is kind of a rhytm to aquarium keeping — you learn to live with a balance in your aquarium by monitoring it and learning from mistakes.
how big is your tank? i would assume that the cycling is going on and start doing weekly cleaning — the gravel vaccum, 20% water change routine. wait a couple weeks still before adding any more fish and then add them a few at a time.
this would be a great time to add some plants if you are considering live plants. things like water sprite, floating plants and mosses do a great job in controlling nitrites while your tank is cycling.