Hello! Just wondering what’s going on with my cycling (and if this ph is ok for a betta) I’m day 5 of cycling a 10 gal, with a little bit of filtered media and some plants and my PH went up by 1 over 2 days. My levels were all still 0 the other day (despite some ghost feeding and decaying plant matter) so I quadrupled my ghost feeding, except it only seems to have made my PH rise wildly and added a tiny bit of ammonia. There seemed to be a bit of nitrate present but I might just be delusional because there’s been no nitrite spike (didn’t test yesterday though?). I’ve only ever kept a betta in a ph closer to 6, and I know consistency is most important with PH but having never had a ph so high should I be worried about increased toxicity of ammonia or nitrite?? Additionally am I hallucinating the nitrates or are there actually some already.
I’ve done 2 25% water changes so far in the cycling process just due to extremely foggy water, and I’m dosing it with bit of flourish excel liquid CO2 and shrimp safe liquid fertiliser to get the plants going, as well as some stability
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1odwmah
Posted by Any-Canary-7976
1 Comment
The increased ammonia toxicity only really matters with fish-in cycling.
With ghostfeeding, follow this guide: [https://www.sosofishy.com/post/a-guide-to-fishless-cycling-using-fish-food-ghostfeeding](https://www.sosofishy.com/post/a-guide-to-fishless-cycling-using-fish-food-ghostfeeding). You are not looking for spikes per se, but rather than ammonia and nitrite can consistently read zero despite constant ghostfeeding.