First tank cycling

[crapotm]

Okay so a it's been 2 weeks since I've began my fish in cycle. I have a 75 gallon tank with a cascade 300 filter, via aqua quartz heater, and a dual t5 fluorescent bulb 48" light. It's my first fish tank but I'm trying to be very careful not to stress them with doing the cycle fish in. The first week I barely began to see my ammonia rise so I left it as it was and now I'm at a pH of 8.2
Ammonia of about 2ppm, nitrite about 1 ppm, and haven't yet really seen much of nitrate.
With my elevated levels I'm doing a 50% water change and going to put in aquasafe as well as Ph down to get the ph into a lower range to better suit my fish. Am I along the right track as of now and keep doing what I'm doing or is there any additional advice?

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[skrapeNKA]

Using a fishless cycle with plants in mine took about 6 weeks to complete. If you've got fish in you'll probably want to be doing daily water changes to really keep ammonia levels down. The pH in my tank rests at 8.2; personally I just leave it as it is stable (which is what really matters unless you have really delicate livestock with different needs). More chemicals isn't necessarily more better!

 

[crapotm]

At what point should I do a water change with the ammonia level?

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