Tank not ready for fish?

[roydooms]

I just did my 15% wc and I used the liquid test. Ammonia 0ppm, nitrite 5ppm, nitrate 10ppm. I know that the both ammonia and nitrite should be 0. Do I need to wait a couple hours after wc before doing the test?

 

[jsoong]

Are you cycling the tank? If so, it is not done. Although ammonia may show a small false positive reading (say 0.50) after a wc (from the chloramines in the water), this is not true for nitrites. So waiting a few hours won't help. You have a ways to go if the nitrite is 5.

<Incidentally, you cannot trust the nitrate reading when the nitrite is high ... so the 10 of nitrate does not mean end of cycling.>