Understanding the Nitrogen Cycle

Understanding and managing the nitrogen cycle is crucial to successful aquarium keeping, providing a foundation to keep sustainable water quality so aquarium life can thrive. This is done by regularly monitoring water parameters through testing and conducting routine maintenance, including partial water changes, managing fish load, avoiding overfeeding, and ensuring sufficient filtration, are fundamental practices in effectively managing the nitrogen cycle. These measures are critical for maintaining a balanced aquatic environment by controlling levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, which are essential for promoting a healthy and thriving aquatic habitat.

 

The nitrogen cycle in an aquarium is a crucial biological process essential for maintaining water quality in your aquarium. Cycling plays a pivotal role in maintaining the stability of the aquarium environment and ensuring the health of its inhabitants. This essential process is what is known as cycling.

 

To start and maintain a balanced aquarium, it’s important to start with a strong biological filter. A healthy biological filter needs time to establish the correct beneficial bacteria known as nitrifying bacteria. This bacteria will colonise surfaces such as substrates, ornaments, filter media, and sponges. This is why the cycling process can typically take 4-6 weeks on a newly set up tank, depending on the size of your aquarium and the type of filter you’re using. This may seem like a long time, but there are ways to boost this process much faster, keep reading below!

 

The purpose of cycling an aquarium is to cultivate beneficial bacteria that help process harmful substances like ammonia and nitrites, this keeps the water safe for your fish and other aquatic life.

 

Methods To Boost Cycling:

 

There are a few known methods to boosting the cycle process.

 

The natural sit and leave: This way is a fully natural way and the longest way to let a tank cycle. This method can take 4-6 weeks depending on the size of the aquarium.

 

Empty feeding: Empty Feeding the tank small amounts each day and letting the flakes break down will boost the ammonia levels within the tank and kick start the cycle process. This process will still work but may take a long time to cycle fully, this method can still take up to 2-3 weeks.

Adding one or 2 small fish and feeding lightly: This method has been known to work but its personally not my favourite way of doing things, if not done correctly your fish could be going through a really tough time. Like the empty feeding method, feeding your fish lightly each day, your fish will consume the food and excrete waste, the fish waste will break down and turn into ammonia which will kick start the nitrogen cycle, if you prefer this method, please DO NOT put a whole bunch or fish, or BIG fish all the a new tank at once, unfortunately they may pass away fairly quickly in an aquarium that isnt correctly cycled this method can take up to 2 weeks.

 

Adding in chemicals that contain nitrifying bacteria: You can purchase products such as API Quickstart or (my personal favourite) Seachem Prime. These products contain nitrifying bacteria in the bottle that will instantly start developing in your aqaurium and boost the time the it takes to cycle to about 7 days.

 

How the cycling process works:

 

The cycle begins with the release of Ammonia (NH3) from fish waste, uneaten food and wasting plant matter.

 

Ammonia (NH3) is a highly toxic compound harmful to aquatic life, where there is NH3, there is Beneficial bacteria, primarily an organism known as Nitrosomonas.

 

This organism colonises surfaces within the aquarium and converts Ammonia (NH3) into Nitrite (NO2), which although toxic to fish, is a little less harmful than Ammonia (NH3).

 

Subsequently, there is another group of bacteria, known as Nitrobacter which further processes Nitrite (NO2) into Nitrate (NO3), which is a lot less harmful compound than NH3 and NO2 that accumulates within the water column.

 

Even though NO3 is much safer, it can still pose risks at high levels so it is essential to keep levels below 50ppm for a Live planted aquarium or below 20-30ppm for a non planted aquarium.

 

Managing Nitrate (NO3) levels in the aquarium is usually done through regular weekly water changes and absorption by live plants. If maintenance is neglected, nitrate levels can also build up to toxic levels, which can be harmful to your fish and other aquatic life.

 

Though NO3 may fluctuate between water changes,  NH3 and NO2 should both always read 0ppm for it to be safe for aquatic life to live which will be handled by beneficial bacteria.

 

While understanding the nitrogen cycle is important, its just as important as important not to complicate things. This is where peace of mind comes in.

 

Peace of mind:

 

Though this all may sound a lot, through personal experience, try not to go chasing your parameters too often (PH, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, GH). Testing for levels is completely fine to do, but trying to correct everything by adding this chemical or that comical and trying to have everything pristine and too clean, this does. not. work, you'll end up unbalancing other parameters whilst chasing another which can stress out your cycle by making it fluctuate causing stress to not only all of your fish but to YOURSELF too. Just leave it. 

 

Your fish can adapt to many different PH, hardness levels and even nitrate fluctuations, as long as your tanks levels are balanced and not showing extreme levels of nitrate, ammonia or nitrites then your fish are fine!. No need to add ph ups, downs or this and that to your aqaurium, as long as your fish are happy, thriving and eating, your tank does not need to be adjusted or played with, leaving it alone to do its thing and doing a weekly clean is the best practice you can do for your new pets.

 

I do however recommend testing your aqauriums levels when starting up a new aquarium so you known when your tank is cycled so you know when you can add in your new fish!

 

I also reccomend testing when you have a feeling something is wrong, or fish are acting vastly different or showing signs of stress, this is when it's best to test your levels so you know exactly whats up and needs to be done to correct it.

 

Most of the time your fish just need some fresh water and some further care.

 

If the species of fish that you do want to keep require much harder or softer water than what you have, of course you can definitely use different methods to harden or soften the water using rocks, corals, minerals or chemicals and other things that you may need to do, all im saying is try not to over do everything, you will just cause yourself stress and a bunch of headaches.

Sometimes if your aqaurium has been medicated, depending on the medication it can disrupt your nitrogen cycle, please read the label of the medication for advice. If the medication does prove to break your cycle you can remove any remaining remnants of the medication using activated carbon and putting in some more chemicals containing bacteria to establish some of the lost bacteria within your aquarium.

 

For further guidance on cycling your aquarium, please refer to sections 6 and 7 of our Beginner's Guide, available in the education tab on our website. For more detailed information on maintenance practices, please refer to section 8.

 

You can also find more beginner friendly information, care guides and maintenance in our blogs section! if you would like to know more please visit our how to set up your aquarium and aquarium care and maintenance!

 

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us by completing a contact form or utilise the chat bubble located at the bottom right of your screen. We are here to assist you promptly and effectively.