Fishless cycle help! is this normal?

[rosie2126]

Hiya!
I hope someone can point me in the right direction, I'm currently doing a fishless cycle in my 45l tank, it's an Aquael 50 classic with fan plus 1 filter. 3 live plants. This is my first aquarium, I've been following advice from various posts and forums and I've now become stuck especially with so much conflicting advice... I've been using household ammonia in my tank (I had to order online so in the mean time I put a prawn in the tank which got things started) I used a ammonia calculator which said to add 2.75ml of ammonia, these are my last 10 days results (from the 6th - 14th I was using API strips but research told me they are not brilliant, following results are from API master kit. Ammonia always taken by liquid test)

06/12 ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 0.5
Nitrate 20

8/12 ammonia 4ppm
Nitrite 1ppm
Nitrate 40

10th same as 8th

12/12 ammonia 8ppm
Nitrite 10ppm
Nitrate 160

I then performed 50% wc I reduced the ammonia by half

13/12 ammonia 1ppm
Nitrite 200
Nitrate 10

14/12 ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 200
Nitrate 10

15/12 ammonia 0ppm '
Nitrite 5ppm
Nitrate 160

I did another small wc

16/12 ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 3ppm
Nitrate 40ppm

17/12 ammonia 0.25
Nitrite 5ppm
Nitrate 40ppm

Does this look normal? How much ammonia should I be adding as I think originally it was too much. Am I on the right track? Any answers will be greatly appreciated

 

[Zimmanski]

For fish less cycling you just want to add enough ammonia to keep it at 4ppm, then you test every day and watch for the nitrite spike, then the nitrate spike. Once you see both spikes do a water change then add the needed ammonia, if your readings are 0 ammonia and zero nitrite then you're cycled and you can begin slowly adding fish.

 

[rosie2126]

Thank you for your reply thats helped. Hopefully will be able to get fish in the new year