Has my cycle stalled?

[Shancas]

Hello everyone im in the middle of a fishless cycle at the moment, parameters have stopped changing for a while so im just here to check what others think.

Setup:

20 gallon/90l tank
Fluval U3 and Fluval heater
No airstones/aeration because the filters splashing the surface and theres a lot of bubbles already.

Started cycle 21st july, filled tank added conditioner and left running for a day on 20th, then added 1 bottle tetra safestart which i got free and dosed to 3ppm ammonia. The heaters running at 83 farenheit and ive been dosing with kleen off ammonia. Tap water ph is 6.6-6.8.

Was going well and testing usually daily, but a few nights i missed and tested next morning because ive been working 60hr weeks and have forgotten. The tetra safestart seemed to work and the ammonia was falling and i was re-dosing as i should until the 2nd august when i decided to test for nitrite, which was 0ppm, nitrate, which was 40-80ppm (cant tell very well with the api test because they are so similar) and ph was 8.2. This surprised me because i must have underestimated the time and missed the whole middle of the cycle.

Then things started to slow down, the 2nd august was the last time i dosed ammonia up to 3ppm, since then ammonia has not changed much, ph has dropped slightly to 7.8-8.0, nitrite has remained 0 and nitrate is around 20-40ppm. Has my cycle stalled and what should i do now?

TLDR:

Started cycle on 21 july
Ammonia dropping as expected
First tested for nitrites 2nd august (Nitrites never detected,think i missed them)
First tested for nitrates at 2nd august 40-80ppm (seemed to be there a while already)
Last ammonia dose was 2nd august
Since then no real change except ph dropping slightly to 7.8-8.0 from 8.2 and nitrate to 20-40ppm.

Any help appreciated.

 

[liulady]

Hmmmm...I'm not an expert. But, I did just successfully finish a fishless cycle recently.

I think that it is unusual that you would completely "miss" the nitrite part of the cycle unless you started with some really good seeding material. I had some seeded filter media and it still took weeks for my tank to cycle. The nitrite part of the cycle was by far the longest lasting several weeks.

The fact that your ammonia level is not dropping now is not a good sign. I honestly think that something must have happened to restart your cycle. In my experience, nothing ever went "backwards" in the cycle. Once the ammonia dropped to zero and started converting to nitrite, I never again had an ammonia reading even though I continually dosed it back up to 4 ppm each evening. By morning, it was zero ammonia.

A question that I know will be asked: Have you tested your tap water to see if it contains nitrates? Sometimes this causes people to think they have finished their cycle.

Hopefully, someone else will have more insight.