Any advice on my fishless cycle ?

[Aquariusly]

I have been doing a fishless cycle for almost 5 weeks now...
It's a 40 litre tank

I didn't use ammonia as I was advised not to but wish I had after doing all the research...
So I did it with fish food... I had a spike in ammonia and then nitrites and then ammonia was 0 and within a 2 weeks nitrates had gone up and both my ammonia and nitrites were 0 but someone on another forum told me it was too quick... and to make sure it was cycled properly .. so I carried on and then when I got nitrites again they were high and stayed for 2 and a half weeks and only went down almost a week ago but then just as it was going right down and was barely showing any, my ammonia spiked but now that won't go down and my nitrites haven't gone up and it's been 5 days ... I dunno what to do.. I've done water changes and followed everything I read.. I have a large annubias plant in there and some moss.. the anubias hasn't been doing too well but it's still looking okay...

I don't know what I'm doing wrong... should I start again ? Can you even start again ? Or shall I leave it and hope it carries on and eventually cycles ?
If anyone has any advice for me I'd be very grateful.. please dumb it down for me tho .. ?

 

[Aiken Drum]

IMO opinion fish food is a poor way to dose ammonia. You should be to raising ammonia to 2ppm and its difficult to judge how much food is needed to do that. A better option is an aquarium specific ammonium chloride product that can be dosed accurately.

Your options are.

- Continue with fish food. Add as much food as you would feed to a tank full of fish and wait for ammonia and nitrite to spike and ammonia to drop to zero. Then add that much food again, wait for the ammonia and nitrite to spike and ammonia to drop to zero. Etc etc. Keep doing that, feeding the tank, until you no longer see any ammonia or nitrite in your tests.

- Stop feeding fish food and switch to ammonium chloride. Dose up to 2ppm. Test daily for ammonia and nitrite. Whenever your ammonia drops below 1ppm, redose it back to 2ppm. When you can dose 2ppm ammonia and 24 hours later see zero ammonia and nitrite you are cycled.

Or. Do a 100% water change, syphon out any uneaten food and go to a fish in cycle. We get a lot of traffic on this site with new fishkeepers unable to get tanks cycled. By far more of them have issues with fishless cycles than fish in cycles. They dont really understand how to do fishless, expect it to run to unrealistic timetables based etc. Almost without fail changing to a fish in cycle resolves the issue.

Whatever you do you arent starting over. What you have done so far will be of some benefit. But cycling a tank typically takes 6 to 8 weeks if everything goes well. I would expect you need another 4 to 6 weeks to complete your cycle no matter what you do.

Let us know what you decide to do, and if you want any further guidance based on your decision.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Oh. And to add. If your plants are melting, the decay will be contributing to ammonia and this will explain ammonia spikes when you havent been feeding. Make sure to remove dead and dying leaves so they arent contributing to your issues.

 

[Aquariusly]

Thank you for your reply and advice xx I think I'm going to see what happens with this ammonia spike.. see if the nitrites go up and see if it starts cycling again.. if not I try something else...
Thank you for your help xxx