my aquariums water testing results

[janeth0185]

im kinda confused on this.well got my water tested at my lfs saturday and read:
ph 7.6
high range ph 7.8
ammonia .50
nitrite 0
nitrate 5.0

lady told me to not do no more water changes til wednesday.i did a water change yesterday( yea i didnt listen to her cuz i thought a pwc wouldnt hurt), did about 50% water change.havent gotten it tested since i did it but i did test with strips and well seems like its about the same as she told me.from the readings can anyone tell if my tank is almost cycling.??i been trying to cycle this tank for like 3 months already.!i wanna add more fish to my tank already...

 

[ranjith]

3 months is a long time, I got mine cycled in less than a month. You could wait for a little longer without water change and check on the parameters, to be sure. What size is your tank, your stocking and what sorta filter do you use?

 

[janeth0185]

3 months is a long time, I got mine cycled in less than a month. You could wait for a little longer without water change and check on the parameters, to be sure. What size is your tank, your stocking and what sorta filter do you use?

i got a 10 gallon and it was a kit.the filter that came with is is a aquatech power filter 5-15 ( wish i woulda known before hand to buy things seperate and buy a bigger filter for a 10gallon). i started of with goldfishes.yes big mistake.and those goldies died in july.got tthe tank in may.the amonia was super high when they died and i left the tank empty while doin pwc daily for 2 weeeks .then got a guppy and a three line cory.so 2 fishes in there now.so what should i do to get it cycled faster? should i stop the water changes as the lady at the store said?im just scraed ammonia rises

 

[ranjith]

I got my 10 gallon kit exactly like yours with 2 pairs of goldies, 6 tiger barb and 2 mollies. The mollies died on day one and buy the next few days 2 golds (one common and one moor died). This happened a fortnight ago and my lfs said i dint have anything to worry and trusted him. It was devastating, then to see the tigers nipping on the goldies. So I got a 50 gallon and moved the tigers and then got the test kit. The 10g had so much ammonia i was doing 2 50%+ water change per day for a couple days and then the nitrites did the samething but stayed high longer. After 20 days both ammonia and nitrites are 0, but the tank is still way over stocked and i'm planning to get a bigger tank for them soon.

My new tank's ammonia wouldn't go up at all so i went out and got a few more. lol Nitrites were the ones that bothered me more here too, once it starts shooting it stays there for a while before dropping, makes sense though.

You have trace of nitrate which i never had till the very end, so its either cycled or it's residual but you do a lot of water changes. So maybe its already cycled. If your fishes are active, then maybe the parameter aren't that bad. But don't forget to take readings to make sure.