My tank won't cycle

[lapisdragonfly]

Hello,

About three months ago I bought an Eclipse 6 gallon aquarium for my desk. A couple of days after setup I added a couple of mollies and waited for the tank to cycle. My tank I monitored the levels in the tank and the ammonia levels were through the roof (between 4.0 - and 8.0 ppm) which I expected in cycling the tank. I lost one of the mollies and after a week replaced it with two glow fish. The ammonia numbers have remained unchanged, and I have never registered in nitrate or nitrite ever. I have increased 25% water changes from every 10 days to every four days the ammonia levels will drop to around 2.0ppm directly after a water change and build back up. I have never changed the filter and am just trying to figure out why my tank hasn't cycled. The fish are doing fine, including the original molly, and I am only feeding them every other day to help keep ammonia levels down. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Pure]

Are you adding anything to neutralize ammonia? If so it will give false readings.

Over cleaning could be the issue. Don't clean the filter the same time you do a gravel vac.

 

[TAL]

I have a smaller tank that I had a hard time getting to cycle.

I used the product - stress zyme and it helped me finally get to where I needed to be but I never had the problem you are having.

I also had to watch out for vacuuming becasue as one perso here warned me......it causes a huge ammonia spike in a small tank.

DO you have good material in the tank to let the bacteria grow on?

What kind of test kits are you using.

ARe you messing with the bio wheel at all? Do you treat the new water you add in with something like STress Coat?

 

[MissFishy]

First of all, your 6 gallon is far too small for one molly, let alone a molly and glofish. That is too much of a bioload for such a small tank and you will have trouble cycling it with those messy fish.

Second, are you treating the water with water conditioner to remove the chlorine and chloramines from your tap water?

 

[blue_ram]

Hello,

About three months ago I bought an Eclipse 6 gallon aquarium for my desk. A couple of days after setup I added a couple of mollies and waited for the tank to cycle. My tank I monitored the levels in the tank and the ammonia levels were through the roof (between 4.0 - and 8.0 ppm) which I expected in cycling the tank. I lost one of the mollies and after a week replaced it with two glow fish. The ammonia numbers have remained unchanged, and I have never registered in nitrate or nitrite ever. I have increased 25% water changes from every 10 days to every four days the ammonia levels will drop to around 2.0ppm directly after a water change and build back up. I have never changed the filter and am just trying to figure out why my tank hasn't cycled. The fish are doing fine, including the original molly, and I am only feeding them every other day to help keep ammonia levels down. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

If ammonia levels were truly that high, then the fish would be dead. Waht are you using to test the water? Did you add in something to make the water safe?

 

[TamFish]

Is there an answer on this because I am right where the initial poster is. I just want to know if you got your parameters under control. I'm going to try and jump start this ef'er with nitrite bacteria.

 

[DesignsOnYou]

Hey, TamFish, welcome to the tank. Unfortunately, this thread is about 9 months old, and the OP only had one post, so is unlikely to come back. If you're having the same problems though, you can start a new thread to ask your question. It will help us if we know the size of your tank, your stocking, how long it's been set up, what your water change schedule is like, and what your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings are. Also, the same questions are probably going to come up as were asked in this thread, such as, are you adding chemicals? are you perhaps over cleaning? are you using dechlorinator? is your tank just so overstocked that it won't cycle? is your test perhaps wrong? etc. Hopefully if you give us the info I mentioned and answer the questions asked in response to the initial post, we can help you out.