Cycling Stalled? Never started?

[dmglus]

Hello all!
I recently got a 5.5 gallon fish tank with a homemade sponge filter and a few different types of plants. I’ve been trying to fishless cycle it for about two months now.

The first time around I ended up getting super high readings of nitrates (yay!) and then I let the tank run out of ammonia. According to the fish tank cycling guide on FishLab.com this crashed the cycle so I started over. I haven’t been able to get any nitrite readings or nitrate readings whatsoever for about a month even with keeping ammonia above 2-3 ppm. The pH reads a 6.0. I tried to do a water change to bring it up to ~7 (which I read is best), but it just keeps plummeting. The pH in my tap water (today) reads about a 7.2.

My plants are thriving but I’m getting tired of looking an empty tank

I’d appreciate any input or advice y’all have!!
Thank you!

 

[Yaz]

Novice to this, so please feel free to take other people's suggestions at higher value. We just went through cycling and just got our nitrates up this week.

However, we were dealing with high pH and a non starting cycle (ammonia wouldn't drop at all) hence I was doing a lot of research. From what I've learned recently is that the nitrifying bacteria don't like the low pH. Possibly why you're not getting the nitrite / nitrate readings.

For us, the pH was 8.0, acceptable to the bacteria, but we just weren't getting enough of a colony even after adding nitrifying bacteria products like Stability (which worked in our other tanks) and Nitromax (recommended by LFS). Neither got it going. Those products' effectiveness depends on exp dates and how they were stored (exposed to hear etc). Figured we probably got a bad batch from a smaller store that didn't turnover much product. Finally found an article where the author had tested and experimented with different products and based on recommendation I added Tetra Safe Start Plus but double the dose suggested on the bottle (as suggested in the article). That got the cycle going.

Hope this helps.