Cycle help needed please!!!!!!!

[bigford84]

so im about 5 or 6 weeks into the cycle of my 28 gal bow front. it has about 15 lbs of live rock,and 30lbs live sand.everything spiked and gone to zero eccept the nitrate. the nitrate has spiked but keeps going from 40ppm to 80ppm. back and forth.. every day i test the..
ph.
ammo.
nitrite.
nitrate.
salinityand temp.
is this normal for the nitrate?? should i do a water change?? what do i do?? thanks for your time. oh and i have 5 hermit crabs,1 turbo snail,and 1 blenny. want told at my lfs they were good hardy starter fish..

 

[Deep Seven]

Sounds like you're cycled, do water change to get nitrates down. You want to keep them below 50ppm, preferrably below 30ppm.

What are you testing with? With the level oscillating like that I'd think the test was somewhat faulty.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

If your ammonia AND nitrItes spiked and went to zero, your cycle is done. NitrAtes won't go away until you do a water change. Not sure why they're bouncing around - they shouldn't be. I'm guessing there must be some inconsistencies with the testing each time.

So yeah - if ammonia and nitrites spiked and are at zero, several 20% water changes every few days to get those nitrates down to wherever you want them (preferable as close to zero as possible) are the next thing you want to do. If you didn't have livestock in there, you could do a 90% water change and be done with it in one shot. But with livestock, you don't want to shift the water parameters too much each time.

 

[bigford84]

really a 90% water change??? wont that throw somthing off?? if not a 90% then just 20% avery day till i like the test?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I said "if you didn't have livestock in there". So, no - don't do a 90% water change. Just do 20% changes every other day.

That's the beauty of a fishless cycle. At the end, there's nothing in there to be bothered by a huge swing in water parameters so you can basically dump out all the water, fill it up again, and have perfect water conditions.

But with critters... no.... no 90% change.