Fishless Mid-cycle advice?

[Rikki101]

I have a 4 gallon tank that I'm fishless cycling by adding drops of pure ammonia. Currently, the bacteria is eating all the ammonia (about 2.4/3.7ppm) in 24hrs the Nitrites are really high (3.3+ unreadable) the Nitrites are still pretty low (10-20ppm) I did a 50% water change yesterday but the Nitrites are still through the roof. I'm not sure what the next step is... Change all the water to get the Nitrites down? Stop feeding ammonia (won't that starve the ammonia converting bacteria?) Please advise? I don't want to stall the cycle... I feel like we have been waiting for this tank to cycle for tooooo long! TIA!

 

[ImACoolguy]

Don't water change. title says it's a Fishless cycle, there's no need to change the water till your nitrates hit 0 one day. Till then, do as you have been at keep adding ammonia.


Caleb

 

[Rikki101]

Thanks for the reply... Keep dosing ammonia up to 2/3 ppm??

 

[ImACoolguy]

Thanks for the reply... Keep dosing ammonia up to 2/3 ppm??

Yes and don't water change again till your nitrites hit 0


Caleb

 

[coralbandit]

I would only dose ammonia every 4 days once nitrites show until the cycle is complete.

I believe (courtesy of Caliban07) that 1ppm ammonia equals 2.7 ppm nitrite.
So even if the ammonia goes to 0 overnight the nitrites are getting higher and higher as your test show.
You don't need to change water but you may speed things up if you get your nitrite to a readable level through water changes.

 

[aclark]

The common throught is that high nitrites can stall out a cycle if they get out of control. I ran into the same problem and did a large water change. They nitrites were still off the charts, but it seemed to bring them down to a level to start the cycle again. I checked a few days after the WC and my nitrites were back down to 0. I Redosed ammonia and I'm nearing the end of my cycle.