Fishless Cycle - nitrite and nitrate

[sauce961]

Hey guys,

SO I've been cycling a 90 gallon tank (eventually for African cichlids) for about a month now. I started by dosing 4ppm of ammonia. About two weeks ago the ammonia dropped and nitrites showed at about 1ppm. Since then I have been dosing the ammonia up to 4ppm every time it falls to 1ppm. The nitrites were hanging around at about .25-.50. The last time I tested I had Ammonia at 1ppm and my nitrites were 5ppm or more. Nitrates are showing as a bright red color. I am using the API liquid test kit. I assumed my bacteria for breaking down nitrites were working and converting to nitrates but now I finally have this spike.

So finally -- my question -- ammonia is dropping pretty fast. BUT I'm not sure what to do at this point. Now that I have sky high nitrites and nitrates...should I do a water change?? should I just leave it?? I'm kind of at a point where I'm not sure what to do and really don't want the cycle to stall or get messed up so close to completion. Thanks so much for reading and any help would be awesome. Thank you!!

 

[Kimbie]

Have you thought about getting live plants from established tanks? That is how we started. If you are not interested in that, you can get some bacteria from the LFS. A water change before you have the proper bacteria will interrupt the nitrogen cycle.

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[sauce961]

thanks for the reply! I tried getting seeding material from LFS back when I first started the cycling process but none seemed to be interested in selling or giving any away. Since my ammonia dropped and has been dropping pretty rapidly for a few weeks now I basically just want to make sure that the nitrites and nitrates spiking wont stall my cycle. I assume at this point I just need to be patient and wait it out as I have read that nitrites remain high for a while and will drop suddenly -- but I just want to make sure I shouldn't be doing anything else. In the meantime I will continue to look for some seeding material to help speed it up and continue to dose my ammonia up as it drops. I'm just getting nervous that I should be doing something about those high levels...being patient is killing me!! haha

 

[Kimbie]

Well are you familiar with the nitrogen cycle? The more ammonia you add, the higher your nitrogen will get. I would put off adding ammonia for a few days and see what happens s

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[sauce961]

I am familiar with it -- this is my first time doing a full fishless cycle. I thought that the bacteria that eat the ammonia would starve without any source of ammonia in the tank so I keep dosing as it lowers. I can definitely see why it makes sense to give dosing the ammonia a break so that the second form of bacteria can eliminate the nitrite -- u just don't want to lose the bacteria that I have already built up to handle the ammonia.

 

[Linwood]

First, the nitrate test is not very accurate (I actually think very inaccurate) when the nitrites are high. I would not bother testing for nitrates (at least with the API test, not sure about others) until nitrites drop.

I had nitrites go up to about 10 for several days, and nitrites were in general up for about 12 days. Prior tank even longer. I dropped ammonia dosing to aim at about 0.5ppm once the nitrites went up; that's contrary to a lot of recommendations.

I also found it helped me (but did nothing useful of course) to dilute the tank water with distilled water when testing the nitrites to get a more accurate reading, either 1:1 or 5:1 was a convenient amount. When it's 2+ it's just very difficult to read, and it helped me to know how high, high was.

 

[sauce961]

Thanks linwood. My ammonia drops on its own pretty quickly so i wouldnt need that step anyway....but its good to know that your nitrites went up that high and came down. Did u wver change any water or did the bacteria just take care of it on its own? And also did your nitrite level drop suddenly as i have seen others suggest it would?

 

[Linwood]

Because I was fishless (and partly because I was lazy) I did no water changes. Other will claim the really high nitrites either (a) harm the BB growing, or (b) harm plants I had. I do not know if it can; neither seemed to happen however.

If you're curious here is how the cycle looked.

i should add the early dip in the ammonia is probably a measurement error; I can't explain it otherwise. I did finally relent and change the water when the ammonia just stayed so high, but after about 50% water change it actually seemed to drop more than 50%, so my guess is that it was heading down anyway and I jumped the gun.

I did think the nitrite lasted long enough to be safe I kept dosing a bit of ammonia. That may have lengthened it a bit also.

But from reading, everyone's tank is different, some much longer, some shorter.

 

[sauce961]

Thank you very much. That chart seems to be exactly how mine went ....ammonia dropped...the nitrite just hung at a low number for a while...and boom it shot up. I think instead of dosing ammonia up to 4ppm i'll try to just keep it up at 2pp to not create so much nitrite. And hopefully it wont be long until it drops. I want to hesiate to change water bc A) its a lot haha B) im scared that any chlorine will survive dechlorinator and kill bacteria and C) i dont want anything to happen to the bacteria in my filters. So i guess patience is really what i need to go with.