Help - Fishless Cycling a 5.5 gallon tank

[SCC93]

Recently started cycling a 5.5 gallon tank but unsure of what my status is. A week ago I added Tetra Safe Start Plus. Water was dechlorinated prior to adding the bacteria and temperature has been ~81 degrees. I added ammonia (from ACE) and got it up to 4 ppm and began to wait for it to drop.

It had been slowly dropping all week and yesterday it was about 0.5 ppm. Just checked it today and it was back up to ~1.5 ppm!! I haven't added any ammonia or touched the tank (except to do tests) since the initial dose and pH has been around 6.5.

The ONLY thing I can think of why it increased on its own is I put some Amazon Swords (kinda small, maybe 3-4") in and one had two pretty bad looking leaves but I was hoping they could turn it around after I added root tabs. Could the dead leaves (which have now been removed) be the source of ammonia or has my cycle stalled/failed...? I'm really hoping to get this tank cycled in the next month so I any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[icydeath]

The dead leaves could've spiked it for sure. Keep an eye on the ammonia and test it a few times to make sure you aren't getting false readings from putting in too many drops or something.

 

[SCC93]

Ok thanks. I'll test it again and see if it is still around 1.5 ppm. How low should I let the ammonia level drop before adding more?

Some people say let it drop to 0 but others say once it's around 1.0 to dose it back up. Also, I'm planning on just having 1 betta in this tank so I'm not sure how high I need to dose it back up to either.

 

[icydeath]

Honestly, for tanks under 10 gallons, it can be hard to cycle. Just keep dosing it back up to 4ppm and once you get nitrates, huge water change. Then you are cycled. I would grab some anacharis or hornwort as a smaller tank is harder to cycle and the anacharis or hornwort will be an ammonia sponge which will be incredibly useful.

 

[SCC93]

Ammonia levels are still ~1.5 - 2.0 ppm. Thought they'd have dropped a bit by now so I'm back to being concerned that the cycle has stalled...

I went from 4.0 ppm to 0.5 ppm in a little less than a week so the fact that I've gotten a reading of 2.0 ppm for at least 2 days straight is concerning.

 

[icydeath]

This should be of assistance. http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f15/the-almost-complete-guide-and-faq-to-fishless-cycling-148283.html