Cycled Tank- Ammonia is Back?

[snafusnake]

I have had a hell of a time with this tank. It took about 3 months to get it cycled. All sorts of weird stalling issues that nobody can seem to figure out. Finally, it started to act normally and finished cycling about two weeks after I added a 10 oz bottle of nitrifying bacteria. Two days later, (yesterday) I check the levels and I have .50 ppm ammonia and nitrate at 5 ppm. Nitrite is still at 0. I watched it take care of 1 ppm of ammonia per day during the time the cycling was finishing up.

Tank details:

8.5 gallon Fluval Vista tank with Aquaclear 20 filter.
I use cnodes, sponge, and some purigen in the filter
Aqueon water conditioner.
Using API kit to test plus Tetra easy strips
Just have some black sand and fake plants in the tank
1 male betta fish only
I feed him pellets and dried blood worms

Realized that the sponge was quite dirty, which must have just been from the shrimp that I put in the tank to start the cycle. It was a fishless one. So I rinsed that in tank water yesterday, change out a little bit of water, probably 15-20%. Checked levels again today and they are the same. I don't know why it cycled but now can't take care of that bit of ammonia. I made sure ammonia and nitrates were at 0 before I put my fish in. Does anyone have any ideas of what could be going on?

 

[Autumnsky]

Any dead snails or left over food in corners or in gravel?

Generally the cycling dosing level will be 4ppm for ammonia, not 1.

 

[snafusnake]

Nope, I don't have any snails. The ammonia got to over 4 ppm before it started to drop back down. It actually got stalled for like 3 weeks where the ammonia just remained high and nothing else was showing up. That's when I put in some nitrifying bacteria. About 2 weeks after that, the nitrate and nitrite started showing up and at the end, it was taking care of about 1 ppm of ammonia per day. That's what I was referring to 1 ppm ammonia about.

 

[Autumnsky]

Normally you add the 4ppm dose again after the ammonia has gone down to show it is able to handle this high amount.

If you swished the filter pad maybe you lost a decent amount of BB.

The shrimp ammonia should have been long gone. Though the left over muck would be nitrate causing buildup in the filter pad. That doesn't seem to be the issue.

Maybe a weak amount of BB for the feeding and waste. Sometimes the BB in a bottle doesn't always have enough of certain kinds of BB which can maintain stability and they die off soon is what I have read.

Not too sure, but if ammonia is at that level another 50% pwc and light feeding for a day and check tomorrow.

 

[snafusnake]

I see. I have a friend who has tanks and have been going by his instruction but he didn't say anything about dosing the ammonia again. I checked it again today after seeing your reply and it had gone up to 1 ppm, so I did a 50% change and brought it back down to .50 ppm. I will check again tomorrow

 

[Autumnsky]

Check here in the freshwater articles second page of the articles list and it is called almost everything you need to know about fishless cycling. I might have misunderstood what you meant. It reviews the process of how it should/ or is a good way to do it to build a good bb colony.

If you are going through a mini cycle read the doing it fish in article, and the I already have fish article next to the fishless cycle article.