# What to do to keep the bacteria alive?



## Rohkey (Apr 25, 2011)

My tank has completed cycling, ammonia is now reading 0 ppm, and I have 3 fish in my tank that aren't hungry and aren't pooping. What should I do to keep the bacteria from dying off? I was thinking about adding about 10% of the ammonia I was adding during the fishless cycle, but would 1 ppm of ammonia for 12 hours be too much for the fish, who are already stressed, to handle?


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## allaboutfish (May 18, 2011)

what about nitites and nitrates? the fish could be sick. dont add ammonia.


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## rtbob (Jul 18, 2010)

Never add ammonia to a tank with fish in it. Your fish will eat eventually. The only one of my 50 fish I have ever seen poop is my pleco. In other words your fish are pooping and your not seeing it.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

The bacteria doesn't die off instantly.

Plus, the great thing about a fishless cycle where you were adding heavy doeses of ammonia, once you're done you can nearly fully stock the tank the first day. If you do it that way, your tank has been acting like it is extremely overstocked and more ammonia has been added than the fish could ever create in one day. Up to you how you want to do it. You know the amount of ammonia you were dosing. I added 60 fish the first day on my newly cycled (fishless) 125g tank and never even saw a trace of ammonia.


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## Rohkey (Apr 25, 2011)

allaboutfish said:


> what about nitites and nitrates? the fish could be sick. dont add ammonia.


Nitrites 0 ppm, nitrates 40 ppm. I did numerous 15-25% water changes the last two days and today the nitrates were still reading at 160 ppm+. I did a 50% change and the nitrates were still fairly high, did another and they finally dropped to about 5-10 ppm which is where my tap is. Turns out, though, I was probably getting wrong results for nitrates as I was using the API Freshwater test and shaking the 2nd bottle for 30 sec as suggested in the manual, but I've read a few places that it should be shaken for nearly 2 minutes or it might show less nitrates then there actually are. Thus I thought they were around 10 when in fact they showed up as 40 once I did the test the "right" way. I plan on doing 10-20% changes every day until I can get the nitrates to under 10 ppm.



jrman83 said:


> The bacteria doesn't die off instantly.
> 
> Plus, the great thing about a fishless cycle where you were adding heavy doeses of ammonia, once you're done you can nearly fully stock the tank the first day. If you do it that way, your tank has been acting like it is extremely overstocked and more ammonia has been added than the fish could ever create in one day. Up to you how you want to do it. You know the amount of ammonia you were dosing. I added 60 fish the first day on my newly cycled (fishless) 125g tank and never even saw a trace of ammonia.


How long do you think it takes? And tomorrow I do plan on adding a lot more fish. I originally was going to take it slow and I didn't understand why everywhere I read it suggested slowly stocking the aquarium when the fishless cycle seems to prepare the tank for a high bioload as you mention. It finally hit me I had been reading material that was basing its recommendations off of slowly cycling the tank with fish, thus not applicable to my tank. Thank you though, for confirming this.


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## allaboutfish (May 18, 2011)

it's 30 sec on the actual bottle of number 2 and 1 min for the test tube


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## Rohkey (Apr 25, 2011)

allaboutfish said:


> it's 30 sec on the actual bottle of number 2 and 1 min for the test tube


Yeah, that's what it says..but I read that 30 sec wasn't sufficient. Before I left to get my fish (test 1) nitrates showed up as 10 ppm. When I got home, after adding the fish, I redid the test while shaking it for 2 min and the nitrates showed up as 4x what they were when I shook it for 30 sec. I repeated the test 30 minutes later with the same results (test 3). During the time that elapsed from test 1 to test 3 the only thing I did was add 3 fish, no water changes, did not add water from the place I got the fish...so the only possible explanation is that the first test was wrong somehow. The possible explanations are that test 1 could have been an anomaly and read falsely due to no fault of the test itself, I could have done something wrong, or perhaps the test was wrong because it wasn't shaken long enough. Tomorrow I'll try both methods again and see if there is a discrepancy in the results. I'll admit sometimes the API tests are difficult to read because some of the colors are very similar, the test often seems to be a blend of colors and not one of the exact shades, and the colors differ based on how you look at them (lighting, close/far from color sheet, etc), so this could have been a possibility too, but I read the results of all 3 tests the same.


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## allaboutfish (May 18, 2011)

oh ok but what if the first on was right?


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

Are you cleaning the test tube between tests? You only need to shake the tube for one minute. Its 30 sec for the bottle that the test comes in.


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## Subaru4wd (May 6, 2011)

Are you using the API test? I heard their Nitrate test isn't that accurate, its whats keeping me from buying their tests.


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## rtbob (Jul 18, 2010)

Bottle number two of the API nitrate test kit may need to be shaken more than one minute if it has been sitting around for awhile. I play it safe. I bang mine on the counter and shake the bejesus out of it for around 1.5 minutes when it has sat for a week.

I have just ordered a Red Sea Lab Liquid Nitrate test kit two days ago. I'm going to do a side by side comparison of the results of testing. I'll let ya'all know the results when the testing is completed. The kit should be here on Thursday.


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## rtbob (Jul 18, 2010)

Subaru4wd said:


> Are you using the API test? I heard their Nitrate test isn't that accurate, its whats keeping me from buying their tests.


The test is accurate, it is their color chart that is wacked. It's easy to tell 0,5,10 and 20ppm ranges. The 40 and 80ppm is identical in color. I figure when my water tests in this range, it's time for a water change no matter what.

I always retest around 4-8 hours later and get results less than 20ppm. Using simple math that tells me it had to be a bit less than 40ppm before the change.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

You really don't know how accurate your particular test is until you calibrate it. Pretty simple to do but you need potassium nitrate to conduct the calibration. They are close enough I think.


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## Rohkey (Apr 25, 2011)

allaboutfish said:


> oh ok but what if the first on was right?


Could have been, I'm going to try to see today. The problem is, as others have mentioned, the bottle was just vigorously shaken yesterday, so it might not matter how long I shake it anymore and both tests might appear to be identical when yesterday they clearly were not.



susankat said:


> Are you cleaning the test tube between tests? You only need to shake the tube for one minute. Its 30 sec for the bottle that the test comes in.


Yeah, I wash out the tube and cap with the tap water, bang it dry, and leave it on a drying mat for an hour or two before reuse. And I realize the tube only needs to be shaken for a minute, the 2 minutes I'm referring to us with the bottle.



Subaru4wd said:


> Are you using the API test? I heard their Nitrate test isn't that accurate, its whats keeping me from buying their tests.


Yeah, API Freshwater Master Kit. I've never heard of their tests being inaccurate (except in this case, which can be alleviated with thorough shaking), but it can be difficult to read the results for the reasons mentioned in this thread already.



rtbob said:


> Bottle number two of the API nitrate test kit may need to be shaken more than one minute if it has been sitting around for awhile. I play it safe. I bang mine on the counter and shake the bejesus out of it for around 1.5 minutes when it has sat for a week.


This makes sense, because when I was cycling the tank I didn't test nitrates very often (was waiting for the nitrite to drop before I did) and yesterday was the first time in probably 2-3 weeks.

Thanks everyone. Today I'm running out and buying 6 more Barbs, 3 Dwarf Frogs, and probably 4-6 Ghost Shrimp to add to my current 3 Barbs. Once I get them all happy I'll make the 30-45 min journey out to buy a Bristlenosed Plec and probably 7-8 more of a community fish...perhaps Skirt Tetras, Neon Tetras, or Zebra Danios..haven't decided (keep changing my mind lol).


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

2min on the bottle is fine. The instructions actually say a "minimum" of 30sec.


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