I have a 55 gallon freshwater planted tank that I'm doing a fishless cycle on. I have some ghost shrimp in there, but no other animal life. Ammonia has dropped to zero a few weeks ago.

I'm curious how long the nitrIte spike should last, and if I should worry about the shrimp in there? NitrItes are around 5ppm, and nitrAtes are around 80ppm. They've been at those numbers for almost a week. The only thing I've added to the tank is a few flakes (like 1/8 tsp) every day, which is all I did to bring up the ammonia level initially as well. The shrimp seem to be doing fine, and are pretty active, climbing on plants & rocks.

Should I just be more patient? Or do I need to start doing water changes? Our water is VERY hard, and PH out of the tap is ~8.2, and using anything but tap water for regular water changes would be a logistical nightmare (carrying 5 gal water containers up 2 floors and a long way from the car)

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

I dont think a water change would hurt anything. dont do anything with filter media other than remove any dead plant matter, you dont want to disturb the bacterial colony any more than you have to.

Shrimp don't usually like ammonia or nitrites. I don't think you should have added them with that going on. You can do the water change, but you could also cut back on the flakes to maybe every 3 days.

When I did my fishless cycle, it sort of stalled out with the nitrites because I had added too much ammonia. I did a relatively large water change, dropped the nitrites down to a better level and it cycled within the next day or so.

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Agreed with the advice already given! Good luck. :D (And, I hear you with the not so great water and not being able to find a different water source!) Not fun!

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I would have just cycled with just the plants in the tank. But since the shrimp is already in there, I wouldn't put anymore flakes into the tank since the ammonia is now at 0. Just wait for the nitrate bacteria to eat away the nitrite bacteria. it takes time to make diamonds ;)

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Zooad's and shrooms
40 pounds of Live sand, 20 pounds of LR

I would definitely do a 50% water change with your Nitrates up that high. The nitrites should cycle through quickly in less saturated water. I'd also cut back on the feeding. That is good advice.

I also had high pH problems until I did a DIY CO2 system. It works great, I can plant my tank and the plants do well, and I no longer have water hovering in the 8.5 pH range. It stays between 7.0 and 7.4.

Chessie

Thanks for the advice everyone. Did a 50% water change about 20 minutes ago, going to give it a couple of hours for the dechlorinator to mix in, and then test again. The shrimp seem to be doing fine, so I'm sure they'll be OK.

@ChessieSFR: I've debated going with CO2 in this tank. If it will help my PH that much, it might be worth it. I'd probably do a DIY setup, and have my air bubbler just run at night to degass the CO2 when night lighting is on.

I'm a homebrewer, so I might come up with a way to use CO2 from a fermenter (after a blow off/gas separator of course, don't want yeast and beer blowoff in my tank).

I'm also a homebrewer, so setting up the DIY was intuitive and a piece of cake. I used 1 Ocean Spray bottle, 1 large Gatorade bottle, silicon tubing, and an air stone. The whole thing sits neatly behind my tank. I just need to remember to take the airstone out of the water if I am refilling the bottles.

It's kinda fun just tossing in a package of bread yeast into the big bottle with a couple of cups of sugar without worrying about sanitizing anything.

I have to recommend the silicon tubing. It has so much give, it sealed the holes I drilled in the bottle caps without a problem.

Good luck with it.

Chessie

Cool, that sounds super easy, and I already have way too much air plumbed into this tank (1 large airstone, and an air-lift tube like for an undergravel filter which is just pulling water from one side to the other since my filter is on one end)

You can set up the CO2 to feed into that second tube. I've got O2 bubbling on one side, by the filter, and my CO2 on the other. You have a larger tank than mine, so look into if you need a two bottle system.

I think there is a good How To thread in this forum somewhere for how to set it up.

Chessie

Thanks everyone for your advice. I built a DIY CO2 system a few nights ago, consisting of the above mentioned air lift tube, with 2 air stones at the bottom. I added a large central tube plugged with marine epoxy at one end, and wrapped a loose spiral of air line around it feeding the second air stone. The result is TONS of tiny bubbles at the bottom, that have to work their way through a spiral labyrinth to reach the top. It only releases a few medium bubbles every 30 seconds or so, despite a mass of tiny ones at the bottom, so I'm thinking lots is being dissolved. That, and the fact that over night my pH dropped from 8.2 to 7.2 after starting the CO2.

Since the CO2 and the water change, nitrItes and nitrAtes have dropped to unreadable levels, and ammonia stayed at zero. The pH has stabilized at 7.2 so far.

Yesterday afternoon, I bought the first 5 fish for this tank: 4 dalmation mollies (1 male, 3 female) and a beautiful male dwarf gourami (the native blue/red striped type). I drip acclimated them with the tank water for about 2.5 hours, then netted them one by one and put them in the tank. I was worried since they all hid immediately in areas I couldn't really keep an eye on. After about a half hour in the tank, they livened up and started exploring.

This morning, I fed them some flakes, and they went crazy for them. Almost nothing hit the bottom for more than a second or two. I think I can safely say I have the start to a beautiful little community. I owe a great deal of thanks to these forums for helping me get started and helping me resist the urge to jump in and get ahead of myself.

Thanks,
Don