I'm at a complete loss w/ what's going on with my cycle. I went on vacation from 4/21 - 4/25 and did a shrimp in pantyhose to keep a constant ammonia source, however I came back to see that my heater was broken & the temperature was down into the 60s, stalling my cycle. I exchanged the heater, got it back up into the mid 80s & started adding ammonia daily to get it back to 4ppm. My nitrites & nitrates were still both at 5 ppm.
Then on 5/2 I added Tetra SafeStart, and added ammonia shortly afterwords. The next day I discovered my ammonia was between 2 - 4ppm (odd because it had been going down to 0 after 24 hours) so I waited another day & discovered it was still at 2 ppm. I then tested my PH & realized it was below 6. My normal PH is around 7.6.
I did a 90% water change & got my ammonia back to 4 ppm, then 24 hours later it was back to 0, and my nitrites were at 5, but now my nitrates are up to 20ppm. How could that have happened? They were only at 5 ppm and I did a 90% water change, so how would it jump to 20 ppm in 24 hours?