[Stace]

Hi There, please bear with me here as I am a newbie who is struggling cycling a fishless, planted tank. All was going well as I started the process in February as you can see in the graph. I added pressurised co2 at the beginning and all plants were doing really well. I was advised not to do any water changes for 4 weeks. I was not really sure whether I was optimising the co2 so took advise from the internet and overdosed the drops to turn the drop checker yellow and then work back to lime green. This happened at the end of February and I believe it caused a significant drop in my PH.
Unfortunately it did not click till mid March that this drop in PH would cause problems and as you can see it looks like it stalled the cycle.

Since then I have switched off the co2, undertaken water changes (upto 50%) daily however each time my PH continues to drop from a starting point of 7.8 to 6.0 in 24 hours. The GH and KH remain at GH 4 and KH 3

My tap water parameters are PH 7.8, GH 4, KH 3

I believe this PH drop is not allowing me to cycle my tank but for the life of me I cannot see what is causing the drop. I don’t believe there is anything in the tank (substrate and hardscape) that can be causing this. I’m at my wits end so any help would be most appreciated

Hopefully the graph below is legible...

 

[Savetheplants]

Your analytics are well presented. This must be a nice setup. You can cycle your media in a bucket with 16 liters of water, a heater, some airline, an airstone, an air pump, a mason jar and a 1" diameter rigid tube. You put the 1" diameter rigid tube in the jar surrounded by the media. Then put that into the bucket and add Ammonia and bacteria to the water. The airstone goes into the rigid tube. You might have to modify this idea if you have a larger setup. The concept is to do your cycling somewhere else. While you're doing that you can decide how to settle things in your tank. At least the tank conditions won't affect your cycling anymore.

EDIT: This is not my idea. I got this from a Tom Barr post. He wasn't specific about how to do it. He just said to do your cycling in a bucket. Oracles can be abstract sometimes.

 

[Stace]

That’s a really good idea. I’d still like to get to the bottom of why my ph keeps bombing

 

[Plinkploop]

Your analytics are well presented. This must be a nice setup. You can cycle your media in a bucket with 16 liters of water, a heater, some airline, an airstone, an air pump, a mason jar and a 1" diameter rigid tube. You put the 1" diameter rigid tube in the jar surrounded by the media. Then put that into the bucket and add Ammonia and bacteria to the water. The airstone goes into the rigid tube. You might have to modify this idea if you have a larger setup. The concept is to do your cycling somewhere else. While you're doing that you can decide how to settle things in your tank. At least the tank conditions won't affect your cycling anymore.

EDIT: This is not my idea. I got this from a Tom Barr post. He wasn't specific about how to do it. He just said to do your cycling in a bucket. Oracles can be abstract sometimes.

😂😂😂 this is 100% valid, just gives me the giggles because this is how I used to make sponge filters for my betta fry in my diy "I'm not paying a darn thing for anything" days. I love it. The cycling of media this way works very well, I can vouche from personal experience. I didn't use ammonia, though, I let a table shrimp rot.

 

[Savetheplants]

That’s a really good idea. I’d still like to get to the bottom of why my ph keeps bombing

I'm not an expert on this but the pH crash coincided with the big 150 ppm Nitrate spike at the end of February. Curiously, the Nitrite did not go down at the same time as the Nitrate spike. I think you are correct in your assessment that the pH affected the cycling. I have read that aerobic bacteria prefer a higher pH of around 8. The only advice I can think of is to maybe do some water changes to keep Nitrate below 50 ppm. You can shore up the pH by increasing the Alkalinity to between 100 and 150 ppm just for the cycling. I'm going through this same issue right now. My tank filter is not working so I'm cycling in a bucket because I have fish in the tank.