Why won't my cycle finish? - Frustrated!

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mrfishybetta

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
27
Location
Morgantown, WV
My fishless cycle has been going for 2 months now - shouldn't I be nearing the end?! I've posted here about a few issues/questions before, and those were very helpful, but now I feel like I'm in a cycle rut again!

Tank is heated and filtered of course, and I have been using the pure ammonia method. Nitrites and nitrates all showed up (after what seemed like forever), and after a few pwcs to fix low pH (I also added a bit of baking soda to help buffer), things seemed to be ok. I was dosing ammonia to 4ppm for a while, then it seemed to stall, so it was recommended that I dose to ~2ppm since there will only be one betta in there. So I've been doing that ever since...but it won't finish!

I dose to 1.5 or 2ppm, then nitrites show up (about a 1.5) , then nitrates (about 3 or 4), and then the levels fall towards 0 (nitrates because I have 2 small plants in there), so its obviously doing something, but this process has been consistently taking 48 hours to do.

What am I doing wrong?! I know I need to get this cycle down to 12 hours...ugh!

Any advice appreciated!
 
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