Next to no nitrates?

[Ellenquacker72]

So I've been cycling my tank for a while, and now theres barely,if any ammonia, about .20 nitrites, and less than five nitrate? Can this be right?
I started doing a fishless cycle, but it was a month and I hadn't seen any progress, so I put 2 fish in my tank, then what do you know, day 5 with fish and Bang, nitrites! So that went up then down in about a week and a half (could that be right?) fish are doing great, have really perked up since the levels went down (I was doing a 50%pwc a day) and now there's barely any nitrates? Is my tank almost cycled, or is something wrong?

 

[librarygirl]

I'm no expert by any means so let someone else confirm this, but you could just be close to cycling. If your nitrItes spiked and now are going down and your ammonia is low or zero then you just might be very close. Did nitrAtes ever spike? It's hard with fish b/c you have to keep doing water changes to keep the levels safe so it can be easy to miss the spikes. I would just keep testing every day and keep doing pwc as needed to keep ammonia and nitrItes <0.25 and nitrAtes <40 to keep the fish safe and see what happens.

 

[Ellenquacker72]

As far as I know there was no nitrate spike... But I'm a little wary of testing because of all the shaking involved I'm a little lazy that way.

 

[jcolon]

Do you have any live plants?

 

[Ellenquacker72]

Yes, 4. 3 java fern and 1 money wort. Do they soak up nitrate?

 

[adadkins1]

Plants, especially fast growing ones, will soak up nitrates. My tank that has about 3 dozen stems of anacharis and some other plants shows only 5-10ppm of nitrates when it is time to do a weekly PWC.

I didn't think slow growers like java fern would soak up much nitrates, maybe eco could help you.

 

[James_in_MN]

One of my tanks, a 10g community, is always showing only 5ppm nitrAtes before its weekly water change. It has two java ferns and a considerable portion of java moss, all of which are keeping my nitrAte levels low.

Also keep in mind that your daily water changes would also be keeping nitrAte levels low. That will change once you stock your tank the way you want to and start changing the water on a weekly basis.