Help!

[johnlucky5]

Hey guys my ammonia is sitting at 2ppm my nitrite 0 and my nitrate 5ppm. Why did I skip nitrite? I'm testing my water everyday and never saw nitrite go up at all...

 

[jwh0818]

Have you tested your tap water for nitrates?
How long has your tank been cycling?

 

[jlk]

Welcome to AA!!

Is this a fishless or fish-in cycle? Have you tested your source water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? Can you please test your tap/source water and post your results? It's possible that you may have ammonia and/or nitrate in your tap water. How to proceed will depend if there are fish.

 

[johnlucky5]

Tap water is
.5 ammonia
O nitrite
O nitrate
Fishless cycle

 

[johnlucky5]

It's been going for a little over a month

 

[jwh0818]

Have you been doing any water changes?
What water conditioner do you use?
Did you use cycled media?
How did you start your fishless cycle?

 

[johnlucky5]

Yes did a Pwc yesterday 60%
I use prime water conditioner
Yes I did, gravel from a fish store and tetra safestart
And I use pure ammonia from Ace Hardware

 

[jwh0818]

Okay thats why your not seeing trites. The gravel and safestart provided enough beneficial bacteria to skip the trites but didnt contain enough ammo to trite bacteria to call it instant cycled. I would stop doing water changes until you have 0 ammo and 0 trites anf have atlease 40ppm of nitrates. Your doing good just dose ammo back to 2ppm as it drops to 0 completely. Once you can dose and its gone within 24 hours your cycled

 

[captaincritical]

I also used seeded media to cycle my tank and never saw nitrites at all. The bacteria that convert ammo to nitrites are probably well established enough that you won't see any when you test - they're converting it that quickly.