cycle stalled???

[harmy4993]

i dont know if i should be worried or not by a stalled cycle.
im on day 23 of my cycle. i was getting weird readings of nitrite so i did a 50% water change on sat. a 50% on sunday and a 80% on monday. after the 80% i got readings i could read. now the last 4 days other then small spikes .25, .50 of ammonia when i add it, i dont get any movement from my nitrites. it has stayed at 1.0 the since that large water change.

should i be worried about a stalled cycle and if so what should i do about it?

[SpeedEuphoria]

did you try adding some flake food?

[harmy4993]

no food just been adding about 1/4 capfull of ammonia. trying to make sure i dont over dose ammonia as that seems to be my problem last time.

ill put in some food.

thanks for your help as always speed.

[SpeedEuphoria]

not a problem, I've never done a fishless cycle personally. I know my cycle with fish took 2 months to complete. I read alot and see many say that adding some flake food ground up may help the cycle. Its debatable but the food does have some stuff in it like phosphates I think, so I think it could help.

[Devilishturtles]

harmy, in my opinion you should let your water sit now and stop adding ammonia. Let the natural bacteria grow and accumulate and I think nitrites will naturally go down in a few days as bacteria populations increase. Add a few flakes of food a day to keep a small ammonia source in there.

That's what I'd do, anyways.

[harmy4993]

ok thanks. i thought i was suppose to keep adding ammonia every day. i added some fish food and ill plan on adding little bit of fish food every 2 days at this point?

[Purrbox]

I have to disagree. You need to keep adding Ammonia or you'll start to see die off of the bacteria that convert Ammonia to Nitrite. You could however cut back to only adding enough to raise the level to 2ppm once a day.