Establishing cycling - still?

[sarahsunshine]

OK, so the first thing anyone is going to say is - go out and get a Nitrate test!

OK, OK, but I have an ammonia test, and a NitrIte test... and I test the tank daily and the nitrites climb overnight to 1.6! I do a 80%pwc once or twice (depending on the time I have) and I get it down to less than 0.3 . Ammonia has been at 0 since the second week of October. Shouldn't nitrites be getting under control by now?

OK, maybe it's slow because I have a too-small filter on my 20g tank (my Eheim should be getting here tomorrow or Thursday)?

I thought it might be because I was overfeeding my goldfish, but I've been rather careful feeding them lately... only once a day and not too much. If anything they are acting hungry.

Any ideas?

 

[Blueiz]

Your tank is still cycling.. The good news is it is progressing . Can you tell us what kind of filter you currently have, how many goldfish you have and how aften you clean or change your filter media. All those things can affect how long it takes to establish enough bacteria to cycle the tank.

 

[BigJim]

The nitrite-nitrate cycle seems to go a lot slower than the ammonia-nitrite cycle. I just finished fishless cycling a tank. I got a little overzealous with the ammonia and just about maxed out the test kit scale. After about two weeks, the tank would convert 5-8pppm of ammonia daily, but the nitrites seemed to have stalled. The nitrates kept rising though.

I stopped dosing ammonia and let the cycle do its thing. After the nitrites got down to 0.25ppm, I did a 90% water change and added some fish last Friday. I checked the water yesterday and all parameters were good.

It took about a month to get my cycle going. You're on your way, just give it time. Be sure to run both filters at the same time to get the new one seeded.

 

[sarahsunshine]

I have 2 1.5" Ryukin (caudal length), and 1 1.5" standard goldfish. The current filter is a Aqua-Tech 5-15 (I know it's not enough, hence the eheim on order). I The reason I have that little filter is I started out with a 10g, and then after 2 weeks (about oct 20) I transferred everything to the bigger tank - fish, filter, water, gravel, and decorations.

I feed the fish about a pinch of goldfish flakes, enough for the to consume most of them in about a minute with hardly any leftover. I sometimes do this twice a day (if I remember).

I have never changed the filter media (it's been since October 2?) because I know that's where the bacteria are growing and I want them to be well established everywhere before messing with the system.

I do a daily 80% water change - sometimes 2, just to keep the nitrites under 0.3 as much as possible.

 

[jim692]

Keep up the good work.
Small feedings and consistent water changes to keep the water quality as high as possible will payoff.
Your current filter is well on it's way to cycling.
When you get the new filter hook it up and run it with the current one.

The hardest part of cycling a tank is waiting for it to be finished. lol.

 

[sarahsunshine]

Oh, good!

How long do you think I need to have both filters running before I can remove the old filter?