Fishless Cycle: Ammonia going down, no nitrites, but nitrates showing up

[Dorlis]

Hello everyone.

Day 1
I finally got my fishless cycle going. Conditioned the water using Prime and waited 24 hours. I used tetra safestart plus as my BB and Dr Tim's ammonium chloride as my ammonia source. After adding the BB I dosed to 2.0ish ppm ammonia as instructed on the Dr Tim website. I waited 24 hours and tested again.

Day 2
Ammonia = 1.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 10-20 (Hard to tell since the colors are so close)

Day 3
Ammonia - .5
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 20

Afrer weeks of research I figured I knew what to expect. I thought I should have 0 nitrates until nitrites started showing up. Is this normal?
*Tap water shows no nitrates or nitrites.
*Using API Master Test Kit

 

[Yorg]

Hello everyone.

Day 1
I finally got my fishless cycle going. Conditioned the water using Prime and waited 24 hours. I used tetra safestart plus as my BB and Dr Tim's ammonium chloride as my ammonia source. After adding the BB I dosed to 2.0ish ppm ammonia as instructed on the Dr Tim website. I waited 24 hours and tested again.

Day 2
Ammonia = 1.0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 10-20 (Hard to tell since the colors are so close)

Day 3
Ammonia - .5
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 20

Afrer weeks of research I figured I knew what to expect. I thought I should have 0 nitrates until nitrites started showing up. Is this normal?
*Tap water shows no nitrates or nitrites.
*Using API Master Test Kit

*****************************************
Hi Dorlis:

Three days would be awfully quick for a cycle to be at that stage, but given you have nitrates in the tank water and none in your tap water then you definitely have nitrite-oxidizing bacteria at work.

Other people have reported that, when using a bacterial additive like SafeStart, the nitrite spike happens so quickly that they actually miss it when testing the water. Sounds like that might have happened with your cycle as well.

I guess the best thing to do is keeping dosing with ammonia and testing. When the ammonia and nitrite consistently zero out, your cycle is established!

 

[Dorlis]

Thank you so much. That makes sense. I was wondering if it was possible to miss the nitrites.