Hello :-)

[molliwopp]

Yeah, i actually added mine after 2weeks, i was in the nitrite stage, i was converting ammonia but not nitrite and from what i remember after adding it to my filter it took 3 or 4 days and nitrite disappeared. Dosed ammonia again, tested 24hrs later with no readings, Cycled!

 

[Fishperson]

Yup. Poured it right into my power filter
Is it normal to see a several day lag between putting it in and any change in ammonia our any Nitrites?

Probably. I fishless cycled, and it all went smoothly. What is your ph, gh, and kh? Do you know? If you don't have a kh/gh tester, than you can look on your city's water quality report to see.

 

[phin9009]

My ph is 7.5...I'm using 100% ro water (tap water issues) and dosed seachem replenish to 5dh

 

[molliwopp]

What sort of tap water issues are you having? Super hard, super high ph? Or chemical issues?

 

[phin9009]

All of the above. Plus little chunks of calcium floating that I don't want to put through my filters

 

[phin9009]

EEEEKKKK Tested my tank...between 1 and 2 ppm ammonia...0 nitrites. On a whim, I decided to test my nitrates...and...it came back with 5 ppm! Apparently seeding my tank allowed me to completely skip having nitrites show up Now I just wait for my ammonia to drop to 0, dose it to 2ppm, and hope it disappears in 24 hours right?

 

[molliwopp]

I wouldnt of thought you would skip the nitrite formation, its the longest part of the cycle. Id actually aim to 5ppm of ammonia in 24hrs.

 

[phin9009]

I had heard of other people skipping over it when they seeded their tank (the bacteria are present and process the nitrites as fast as they're created). So since my ammonia was definitely going down, and nitrites still hadn't shown up, I decided to test the nitrates just to see, and they had gone up to 5 (they were 0 before I added the sponge sludge stuff)

 

[molliwopp]

Well if its cycled then thats happend quickly which is good. See how it goes dosing once more and if you dont get readings for either nitrites or ammonia the same time tomorrow then its cycled. Whoop.

 

[phin9009]

My fingers are crossed
I'll probably keep dosing it for a week or so just to make sure it is truly cycled and doesn't do anything weird before I do a pwc and get fish

 

[phin9009]

Still cycling...
Ammonia was at 1ppm last night, topped off tank with 5 gallons to replace what's evaporated over the last 5 weeks, so I know that would account for a small drop in my levels

Ammonia tonight was 0.5 ppm (don't think 5 gallons in a 46 gallon tank could drop the ammonia by half...), nitrites 0 (as they always have been), and nitrates somewhere between 5 and 10 (leaning closer to the 10 end of that scale-hard to differentiate between the colors)