Tank looks great! As for the teat color, if you didnt dig deep enough to disturb the soil and assuming that you didn't presoak the wood since you're glueing the wood to rock I think its safe to say the brown coloring is coming from the DW. It will leach and get filtered out eventually, just takes some time. You can add some carbon or purigen in your filter to speed things up
Tank looks great! As for the teat color, if you didnt dig deep enough to disturb the soil and assuming that you didn't presoak the wood since you're glueing the wood to rock I think its safe to say the brown coloring is coming from the DW. It will leach and get filtered out eventually, just takes some time. You can add some carbon or purigen in your filter to speed things up
I hope someone else can answer about your nitrites and nitrates, I've only actually cycled a tank once the rest were with a portion of cycled media so I'm not sure. But if they're there, they're there, and the bacteria needed to consume them doesn't care when they show up, just that they show up so I'm sure its fine. Hard scape looks good, what's on your plant list?