jlk
Aquarium Advice Addict
Hi Aaron! Unfortunately, water changes are going to be your best bet to keep ammonia levels down until things stablize (hopefully soon!). Keep up the good work & this should be over soon!
adadkins1 said:Well, here it is over a week and I still have .25-.5ppm Ammonia, 0 Nitrites, and 10ppm Nitrates.
Will be continuing daily PWC's.
IMO you will never see nitrites. in other words, you have enough bacteria to convert nitrites to nitrates.... You are just missing a little more of the bacteria that converts ammonia to nitrites ( but you will never see the spike of nitrites).... As soon as you see 0 ammonia you will be done... Keep testing but don't expect nitrites...
I Did a similar process as you did, but I went from 26gallons tank to a 100 G tank!! I used the same filter , new gravel, same ornaments and moved all the fish the same day....never saw a spike of ammonia or nitrites, (later on, I added a bigger filter and keep the tank running like 1 month before I started to add more fish).
My theory is that if your old tank was cycled, you have enough bacteria to process your actual bioload... So even when you went to a bigger tank, if you did not added fish and moved the old gravel ... You bacteria colony should be able to deal with the bioload (same).
A mini cycle is probable because in some way you disturbed the bacteria, but you should be almost done....
That was my experience....