# Unusual ammonia and nitrate level changes?



## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

So I'm a few weeks into what unfortunately turned out to be a fish-in cycle of my 3.5 gallon freshwater aquarium. Water quality was pretty lethal– ammonia 4.0 ppm, nitrite 2.0ppm– two days ago. (That was the first day I detected nitrite, before it was just ammonia at high levels and no sign of the good bacteria growing)
But today when I tested, ammonia was negligible (in fact, the yellow color was identical to a control sample from the tap) and nitrite was at .25ppm. The nitrate looks like it's at 0ppm, I think.
Is such a prodigious drop in ammonia and nitrite normal over 2 days? I didn't expect any change when I tested.


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## hanky (Jan 18, 2012)

yes levels can drop that quick, I take it your familiar with the Nitrogen Cycle, ammonia turns to nitrite which turns to nitrate, with ammonia and nitrite dropping you should see a rise in nitrates unless you have a lot of live plants.


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## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

Well, that's cool then. It seems like patience is the name of the game with aquariums so I figured it'd be longer. 
I do have a number of plants–*two large sword-ish ones and two small sword-ish ones and a few kyoto/mondo grasses. Do you think that's enough to prevent nitrates from showing up? I was hoping to be able to detect nitrates so I would know when my tank had cycled...


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## jbrown5217 (Nov 9, 2011)

If I am not mistaken the mondo grass isn't a true aquatic plant and will rot in your aquarium.


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## hanky (Jan 18, 2012)

You should get some sort of nitrate reading, What test kit do you use? just test it everyday to keep an eye on ammonia and nitrites, as long as they are going down and there not very high to begin with thenlets assume your getting to the end of cycle. whats your readings for today?


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## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

Hanky, yes, it does confuse me that I got none even though my nitrite levels had gone down too... I use the API freshwater master test kit.
I tested today and got 0ppm nitrate and still looks like 0ppm ammonia! But still no detectable nitrate. 
I forgot to mention, in addition to my leafy grass type plants, I have a large moss ball. It's not the cheap hollow kind either, it's solid moss– do you think that about 6 leafy plants and a moss ball in a 3.5 gallon tank would keep my nitrate levels to 0?
@Jbrown, yeah I had heard that they're not true aquatic; they are fine so far but they were cheap anyway so no biggie.


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## hanky (Jan 18, 2012)

well thats about the best test kit out there, I guess as long as you have no ammonia or nitrites your doing fine , maybe all them plants are eating up the nitrates. just make sure you REALLY shake up the solutions for testing for nitrates.


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## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

Will do, thanks. Something else that concerns me is, am I even producing enough ammonia to sustain my bacterial colonies? Most of my guppies didn't make it and I just have the one juvenile left, along with 8-9 pond snails of various sizes. I plan to add a couple guppies, but it'll have to wait a week or so till I get back from a trip. (a friend is feeding the fish every day while I'm gone).


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## hanky (Jan 18, 2012)

you'll be fine, when you do add a few more you may see the ammonia rise a bit till the bacteria can "catch-up" with the added bio-load, that goes with any tank though so just keep an eye on ammonia and keep up with water changes.

Also your fish dont need to be fed everyday, many of us skip a day or two during the week, just to prevent overfeeding or roting food on bottom. Many say they go on vacation for a week and dont feed and their fish are fine, personally I have someone stop over evry 3 days and drop a bit of premeasured food in the tank

A bit of a tip, if you are going to have someone come by that is not familiar with how much to feed, then take a bunch of dixie cups and put the amount you want in each cup, have them dump 1 cup a day, you dont want them overfeeding for a week or your water parameters will be a mess again


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## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

dixie cups are a good idea. what I'm doing is I got a weekly pill organizer and premeasured the food into it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I know that you're right, the fish doesn't need the food every day (it's still a growing guppy though). My chief concern was that the food seemed like a source of ammonia for the bacteria since I was concerned my bioload was negligible. Thanks for your help!
I'll update with my water quality readings soon. Want to make sure I shook that nitrate vial up good enough.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

ro laren said:


> I forgot to mention, in addition to my leafy grass type plants, I have a large moss ball. It's not the cheap hollow kind either, it's solid moss– do you think that about 6 leafy plants and a moss ball in a 3.5 gallon tank would keep my nitrate levels to 0?


I think that is possible. I have found moss balls to be particularly good at removing nitrates.


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## ro laren (May 3, 2012)

Just tested my water quality again. So glad! My tank is apparently definitely cycled.... Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate also 0. Guess that moss ball really is pulling its weight eating up nitrates. Thanks everybody for their input!


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

A cycle with plants can be what is called a 'silent cycle', one where there are no there are no ammonia or nitrite spikes at all. It seems like you may have had something between the two. In the future if you cycle with fish in I suggest you try and keep the ammonia and nitrite levels below 1ppm as it is a lot safer for the fish. 3.5 gallons is pretty small, keep an eye on the levels as it will be easy to tip off balance.


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