Help with fish less cycling

[Irene27]

I am completely new to keeping fish. I have a Juwel Vision 260 aquarium and want to keep tropical fish. I am 36 days into a fish less cycle, adding ammonia each morning to 4ppm.

The ammonia has been dropping to 0, or 0.25, as have the nitrites, and the nitrates have been at 5, so yesterday I did a 90% water change, and added ammonia to 4ppm again.

This morning I am very confused as my readings are

Ammonia 0.5, Nitrite 0.5 but Nitrate 40.

I suddenly thought about the tap water I added yesterday. I tested that and it has a reading of Nitrates at 20 on its own.

I am not sure what to do next. I would really welcome any advice.

Thank you Irene

 

[Fresh2o]

It's not uncommon to have nitrates in tap water. Hopefully this is a seasonal/temporary condition. I once had 5 ppm nitrate and 1 ppm ammonia coming out of my tap water I had to be careful and limit the size of the water changes. Even with 20 ppm nitrate, water changes will do more help than harm. The exceptions would be if you had very sensitive fish or if you were doing SW.
I think you are close to finishing the cycling process. I would test again, especially the nitrite. Once the BB start converting nitrite to nitrate, it's done at such a rate that it is often undetectable. Personally, I would shoot for dosing 2 ppm ammonia. Just a preference based on the assumption that stocking would be performed incrementally (not adding all of the fish at once).


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[Irene27]

Thank you - that is reassuring - I will test again and keep an eye on the tap water.

About stocking …… How many fish would you recommend to start with? I have a list, starting with Cardinal Tetras and Pentazonal Barbs, but thought they could go in all at once, if the tank was cycling correctly. This is probably wrong but I thought the fish had to keep the ammonia levels up to feed the bacteria.

I don't want any casualties!

Thanks again for your help

Irene

 

[lksdrinker]

I'd suggest not dosing as much ammonia anymore. Once you get past the first stage and see the ammonia levels dropping, then you started seeing the nitrite levels rise. Once that happened you could have dropped the daily ammonia dose down to maybe 1 or 2 ppm to continue the cycle. If you can dose 1 ppm ammonia today and see 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite within 24 hours I'd feel safe to add fish.

 

[Irene27]

Thank you. I dosed 1ppm ammonia and am down to zero. So I will start to stock with Cardinal Tertas tomorrow