Cycling mishap perhaps?

[Arthropoddi]

So I'm freshly cycling a ten gallon, and I was feeding it ammonia every day like I *thought* I was supposed to, and I even started getting some nitrites. Now my nitrites are gone and my ammonia reading is so bad the test is coming out black.

There are NO FISH in the aquarium, it is a fishless cycle, there's absolutely nothing in this tank, otherwise it would be dead by now..clearly.

Do I do a water change, or just leave it alone for a few days to grow some nitrites back?

 

[Jed Fish]

Perhaps do a 25-30% water change and add some beneficial bacteria either from an already established healthy tank (substrate, filter media, water etc) or buy some bottled bacteria such as Nutrafin Cycle. It sounds like you are adding too much ammonia to the water, do you have the dose right?

 

[Arthropoddi]

Yeah I'm positive I just overdosed. I'm doing a 50% change tomorrow and will keep checking and doing smaller partial changes after that until I see it lowered. I just read that ammonia over 4 ppm will stall or kill my cycle, so a water change is definitely on my to do list.

Unfortunately this will be my first fully cycled tank, so I don't have other tanks to borrow from