fishless cycle help please

[rotorhead22]

Well I got my levels and temperature all sorted and moved my fish to their new tank 5 days ago. Everything has been fine, I've been testing my water and doing water changes accordingly. This morning when I tested my levels are really bad again in both tanks. Ammonia was fine but my no2 was about 2ppm and my no3 was about 100! However the no2 and no3 readings are from a teststrip so may be inaccurate (still waiting for my api master kit turn up), the ammonia is a proper kit. I've just done a 50 percent water change on the big tank and am gonna do one on the smaller tank in a minute. Any ideas how else I can get my nitrates+nitrites down please?

Just following up. How did your tank progress? Hopefully all is well and your tank finished cycling.

 

[laur94x]

Hiya well all was going well until I swapped from gravel to sand (put the fish in a spare tank for 2 days whilst doing it) my cories love the sand but it seems to have caused a mini cycle so am just doing lots of water changes to try and keep the levels under control. My nitrite is 0, always is, ammonia is just below 0.25ppm but my nitrates won't seem to come down, they're on about 40ppm! I'm doing about 3 water changes a week, about 30% unless more is needed and have 2 filters in my tank but it doesn't seem to be making a difference all fish have survived so far though (touch wood!) X

 

[rotorhead22]

The presence of nitrates means you have Nitrites or your water supply has nitrates. Have you ever measured the water out of your tap for Nitrates?

If you don't have Nitrites then the Ammonia is not converting over. What filters do you have in your tank?

 

[laur94x]

Yeah it doesn't make sense. I have a interpet pf3 filter and an interpet pf1 filter. I did buy one of them things which you put in your filter to remove ammonia and nitrites/nitrates etc so I'm wondering if that was messing up the cycle, I removed it last night though so fingers crossed my levels will go down now

 

[librarygirl]

Sometimes disturbing the gravel can cause some gunk to be released which can cause a toxin spike. If you're doing frequent water changes though and nitrates aren't coming down, it's either:
--there's nitrate in your tap water; it might be good to check the water our of your tap to see
--there's gunk in the filter that's decaying and causing nitrates. You might want to lightly swish the filter media in old tank water when doing a water changes to loosen up and debris that are stuck and check inside the filters, if there's cruddy water in there take it out
--if those two things don't help then you may be overfeeding and/or overstocked. If the nitrates suddenly spiked though after changing the gravel then that's likely the cause.

 

[laur94x]

Hiya, thanks for the suggestions, I will check my tap water when I get home, I don't think it could completely be that though because the water in my other tank doesn't have such high levels. I cleaned my filter in tank water last night too so hopefully my levels will improve, ill check them when I'm home and update. I only have 5 guppies, 2 cories and 1 bristlenose pleco in my 140 litre tank still so can't be overstocked and I'm wary about the amount I feed them so don't think they're over fed. So yeah probably just from changing the gravel to sand. Thank you