Gunk
Aquarium Advice Regular
So I'm fishless cycling my 29gal tank. Nitrites spiked and stayed spiked for about 8-10 days. Now the nitrites are steadily going down and currently down to .5 tonight. Nitrates have been going up slowly and currently are up to a solid 20, maybe more but less than 40 (color is bright orange but not quite red yet), using the api test kit. So the problem is the ammonia. Got down to about .5 after dosing to 2.0 but it took several days to do it. Dosed back up to 2.0 and got down to .5 the next night. Dosed up to 2.0 last night and ammonia is still at 2.0. I don't get it. My tank has NEVER been able to get ammonia down to 0 but all the other tests seem to be progressing normally. So does anyone know why I'm not processing ammonia?
I started cycle towards end of January and didn't see nitrites until a couple weeks ago after a 50% water change seemed to kick start everything on the assumption I may have dosed ammonia to high initially, although my tests never confirmed my ammonia was super high. Test reading looked like 4.0 ammonia initially and never moved until after the water change when I got them down to 2.0. Then they would go down but never to 0. Any ideas anybody?
I started cycle towards end of January and didn't see nitrites until a couple weeks ago after a 50% water change seemed to kick start everything on the assumption I may have dosed ammonia to high initially, although my tests never confirmed my ammonia was super high. Test reading looked like 4.0 ammonia initially and never moved until after the water change when I got them down to 2.0. Then they would go down but never to 0. Any ideas anybody?
