Ok so I am a month into a fishless cycle of a 40 gallon tank with help from a fake plant from a healthy established tank and I am at a loss as to what is going on with my levels. Here is what happened...
I was following the guide posted by eco on this forum, dosing initial ammonia to 4 ppm and only adding more when it dropped to 1 ppm. All seemed to be going well, nitrites were rising and eventuality peaked at 5 ppm for a few days. Nitrates had built up to 40 ppm. Then about a week ago I tested the water and nitrites were 0 ppm! Oddly, ammonia was still at 2 ppm.
I did a large water change in case nitrites were so high that I was getting a false reading, but it was still 0 after the water change. The water change did result in ammonia dropping below 1 ppm. I let ammonia dropping to 0 which it did 2 days later and immediately dosed it back up to about 1.5 ppm in the hopes that it would be back to 0 the next day.
It wasn't. It dropped to .25 ppm. So I put it back up to 1.5 ppm. I did this for 2 days. Then today when I got the same ammonia reading of .25 I tested nitrite to see if it was still at 0 and it wasn't! It was at .25 now as well.
Needless to say I am really confused.
Should I add more ammonia again? Should I do another water change?
After a month I figured I would be almost done.
I do see that the filter media has some yellow marks on it which I have heard is a good sign.
This is my first time setting up a tank so I just want to make sure I am doing the right thing.
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Aquarium Advice mobile app
I was following the guide posted by eco on this forum, dosing initial ammonia to 4 ppm and only adding more when it dropped to 1 ppm. All seemed to be going well, nitrites were rising and eventuality peaked at 5 ppm for a few days. Nitrates had built up to 40 ppm. Then about a week ago I tested the water and nitrites were 0 ppm! Oddly, ammonia was still at 2 ppm.
I did a large water change in case nitrites were so high that I was getting a false reading, but it was still 0 after the water change. The water change did result in ammonia dropping below 1 ppm. I let ammonia dropping to 0 which it did 2 days later and immediately dosed it back up to about 1.5 ppm in the hopes that it would be back to 0 the next day.
It wasn't. It dropped to .25 ppm. So I put it back up to 1.5 ppm. I did this for 2 days. Then today when I got the same ammonia reading of .25 I tested nitrite to see if it was still at 0 and it wasn't! It was at .25 now as well.
Needless to say I am really confused.
Should I add more ammonia again? Should I do another water change?
After a month I figured I would be almost done.
I do see that the filter media has some yellow marks on it which I have heard is a good sign.
This is my first time setting up a tank so I just want to make sure I am doing the right thing.
Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Aquarium Advice mobile app
