Fishless cycle - stalled?

[thekeymaker57]

Hi all,

I have been working on a fishless cycling on a new 55gallon tank, dosing ammonia. Started on Oct 1st so I know it’s only been just over 3 weeks but I’m wondering if I’ve stalled the process.

Set up the tank with Dr Tim’s Nitrifying Bacteria, and dosed Ammonia to 2ppm. I didn’t see anything happening for the first week so on 10/10 I added Fritz Turbo Start 700 Bacteria. The next day I began seeing the first sign of Nitrites (0.25ppm). I kept dosing Ammonia to 2ppm every couple days, which seemed to clear in a couple days each time, while Nitrites increased. Nitrates have been rising slowly also.

Two weeks later, we’re at 1ppm Ammonia (last dosed 2 days ago), 5ppm Nitrites (possibly more?), and 20ppm Nitrates. My worry is that Ammonia is sticking around for a couple days, despite Nitrites being high at the same time and Nitrates increasing also.

Should I do a water change at all to reduce the Nitrites? Wait it out some more?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Aiken Drum]

I would do a water change to reduce the nitrites to a level your test kit can read, for no other reason than having readable levels you can see if its going up or down.

There is no point in testing for nitrate while there is nitrite in the water because nitrite causes false positive results in the nitrate test. You may or may not have nitrate in the water, and if you do have nitrate your test will show it higher than it really is.

 

[thekeymaker57]

I would do a water change to reduce the nitrites to a level your test kit can read, for no other reason than having readable levels you can see if its going up or down.

There is no point in testing for nitrate while there is nitrite in the water because nitrite causes false positive results in the nitrate test. You may or may not have nitrate in the water, and if you do have nitrate your test will show it higher than it really is.

That’s good to know. I’ll stop testing for Nitrates for now, and will do a water change tonight. Will concentrate on the Ammonia and Nitrites. Thanks