Help with fishless cycle

[Susieqhu]

I have been doing a fishless cycle on a new 150 gallon tank. I started it Christmas Eve. I keep the water temp at 82 degrees. I have been adding the ammonia up to 4ppm but it is only taking it about 4 hours to drop back down to .50 or 1 . My nitrites are off the chart with the API master test kit and my nitrates have been staying at 10 for about 4 days now. I done the partial water change and added a pinch of the ground up fish food yesterday morning and still the same results. So what am I to do now ? Is this normal ? If not how do I fix it?

 

[SherLar]

It usually takes a month or more to cycle a tank completely, so I wouldn't get too worried yet. One thing that I like to do when cycling a new tank (I'm sure some aquarists don't agree), is to put a piece of filter media directly in the tank that was taken from the filter of a well established, healthy tank. It usually serves to jump-start bacterial growth. Driftwood, rocks, or even substrate will also work; anything that has a surface area where bacteria can grow well, but filter media seems to work best for me.

 

[Ingy]

Agree on the filter media. Also you don't need to keep dosing to 4 ppm daily. Only add more when it gets to 0. And for the start, dosing to 1 or 2 ppm is plenty. It normally takes about a week for each stage to start, so converting nitrite to nitrate will start later than the ammonia stage.

 

[MDDad]

It took forever for nitrites to disappear for me.