Help with Fishless Cycle

[andy281]

My 40 gallon is fish-less cycling for over a month now I add 4 PPM of ammonia everyday and it is back to 0 Less then 12 hrs later. My problem is the nitrite levels have gone off the charts for over 2 weeks now I have done a 60% water change and no difference in the reading. My Nitrate levels were around 80 PPM and now are starting to fall around 40 PPM. How are the NitrAte Levels going down but and the Nitrite Levels aren't? Also how long does it take an average tank to cycle nitrites to nitrAte's?

Thanks !!

 

[FishyBusiness]

I would try another large WC. Get it down to a readable number. Too high nitrites I believe can stall the process. In times like that should be the only reason to do WC's during fish less cycle. But I would do another one and see how it goes. I've never personally experienced that problem with any of mine so hopefully someone with more experience will clarify for you!

 

[Britty]

I went through this also with my fishless cycle. You must WC continually until you get nitrites within readable range of your test kit. If nitrites are whoppingly high it will stall the cycle. You can hold off ammonia feeds to every second day or cut the daily dose in half to 2ppm until the cycle starts again where it left off. But you must get the nitrites down to readable range before this.

Surprisingly after I did the above the remaining part of the cycle completed in a bit over a week. Pretty quick.

Good luck.

 

[andy281]

so today is the third day of doing 50% PWC to get the nitrites down. I tested the top of the water seconds after finishing the last bucket of water and its still off the charts. Can I do more then one PWC in a day? Should I do a bigger % PWC? Should I vacuum the gravel?

 

[FishyBusiness]

so today is the third day of doing 50% PWC to get the nitrites down. I tested the top of the water seconds after finishing the last bucket of water and its still off the charts. Can I do more then one PWC in a day? Should I do a bigger % PWC? Should I vacuum the gravel?

Vacuuming the gravel won't hurt anything ever, but pointless if you don't have fish. You can do PWC's back to back too. Since your fish less just do like a 90% change. Wait an hour or so and test. If it's still really high do a 50%. Wait an hour and test again.

 

[andy281]

Vacuuming the gravel won't hurt anything ever, but pointless if you don't have fish. You can do PWC's back to back too. Since your fish less just do like a 90% change. Wait an hour or so and test. If it's still really high do a 50%. Wait an hour and test again.

ok will do I just thought there was bacteria in the gravel and vacuuming it would slow or stall the cycle. I have read only to clean half the gravel a week, cleaning the second half the next week. Im going to do a 90% PWC now.

 

[FishyBusiness]

ok will do I just thought there was bacteria in the gravel and vacuuming it would slow or stall the cycle. I have read only to clean half the gravel a week, cleaning the second half the next week. Im going to do a 90% PWC now.

There is bacteria in the gravel but not near as much as in the filter. Vacuuming gravel will (possibly) remove just a teeny tiny bit, nothing to ever worry about. The BB holds on tightly to surfaces... You'll be fine. When I had gravel, I'd vacuum half of it just because my tank is so big, I could do a more thorough job on it.

 

[Britty]

so today is the third day of doing 50% PWC to get the nitrites down. I tested the top of the water seconds after finishing the last bucket of water and its still off the charts. Can I do more then one PWC in a day? Should I do a bigger % PWC? Should I vacuum the gravel?

There's no need to vacuum the gravel. There are no fish, so there's no fish waste to clean.

Keep with the PWC's. I ended up changing significantly more than 100% of my water totalled over many pwc's before my API test kit registered just under 5ppm nitrites.

Good luck