Ammonia and trites wont go down!

[Fish4ever]

Hi,
I started my 72 gallon tank 4 weeks ago with about 25 lbs of dry rock then about a week later added 30-45 lbs live rock.
Now 3 weeks later I still have:
in between 4ppm and 8ppm ammonia
5ppm nitrite
Between 20ppm and 40ppm nitrate

Usually my tanks take at the longest 2 weeks to cycle (10 gallon quarintene, 20 long reef, 28 FOWLR) our 55 took about 2 and a half weeks.

But why won't any of my parameters drop ???

The only ammonia sources would be
Engineer goby
Couple hermits
Sergeant major damsel
And whatever is still on the live rock.

 

[Fish4ever]

I do have the brown algae(can't think of name right now)growing on back wall but not on sand bed.

 

[Nosaj81]

it takes time for the bb to grow i would start using prime tha will make the ammonia and nitrites less toxic to the fish and dose with stability to help with the bacteria

 

[Fish4ever]

I added 3/4 a bottle of tetra safestart earlier , but the whole bottle is for upto 30 gallons

 

[Nosaj81]

4-8 ppm ammonia is high i would use at least the prime

 

[Fish4ever]

I will see if my lfs has it and if not ill order it online

Should I do a water change ?

 

[Fish4ever]

Or what other chemical could I get to reduce ammonia and nitrites

 

[mr_X]

You might want to remove the livestock and let the tank cycle. None of my tanks took 2 weeks to cycle. It was usually about 4 for me.

 

[Drummer254]

At 4-8 ppm I would consider a 90% change or successive 50% changes. I have read that excessive ammonia can also stall a cycle.

 

[Fish4ever]

Then I got lucky.. I usually do a fish less (adding amonnia ). so I only had the damsel a week or so and my dad said that won't create that big of an ammonia source when I had 0 ammonia then I added some ammonia waited for it to go back to zero did it again and it hasn't fallen back down yet and that was 1-2 weeks ago. it took 3 days the first time for it to reach zero.

 

[Fish4ever]

Finally my
Ammonia-0ppm
Nitrite-1ppm
Nitrate-160ppm

I'm gunna have a huge water change soon