Nitrite not going down!

[yudhas]

I'm currently doing a fishless cycling and I'm approaching the end of my 3rd week. Ammonia has been great; now I can dose up to 4ppm and it'll be gone in less than 24 hours. I started seeing Nitrites at the start of the 2nd week. It's been gradually increasing and at one point it was off the charts, so I did a 50% pwc at the start of the third week. It reduced nitrites to about 0.50ppm, but then it started to increase again. Three days after the pwc I did another wc but this time 90%. Before I did the wc, the test for nitrites was off the chart again. One hour after I was done with the 90% wc the nitrites is still high at around 5ppm. Today the nitrites is still at the same level, it seems like it's not going down at all.

At the same time my Nitrates midway through my 2nd week and it skyrocketed until a point where a 50% pwc only brought it down to 80ppm. Finally a 90% wc brought it down to 10ppm.

It's a bit strange that the nitrites refuse to go down at all. Even after a pwc and a major wc. Any ideas why? Anyone can give any suggestion to help reduce the nitrites?

Thanks

 

[AtHomeWithTwins]

Just went through the same thing. When ammonia was converting quickly i figured i was going to be done soon. Not the case. Nitrite takes forever. I just reduced ammonia dose to 2 ppm ( and even did it every other day) and did 50% pwcs to keep nitrite somewhat reasonable. Eventually it did happen, about 6 weeks start to finish.

 

[Just Another Fish Guy]

4ppm is very high. You really only need to dose Ammonia up to about 2ppm. The reason your nitrites are so high is because the nitrite bacteria develops more slowly than ammonia to begin with and you're dosing 4ppm Ammonia pretty much every day or every other day.

I would start dosing only up to 2ppm and let the cycle run its course.

 

[yudhas]

I've started dosing the ammonia about 2ppm for the past week. I'm guessing I have some nitrates before the nitrites going down as I used Seachem Stability. How long before nitrites starts going down?

 

[cfosgate]

+1 with fishguy. Once nitrites start you should drop ammonia dose to 2 ppm. Nitrite bacteria take twice as long to multiply as the ammonia bacteria and therefore twice the wait. You're not far off now so keep with it. Also, you shouldn't have to do water changes with a fishless cycle until you are showing 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites. Then do a big wc to get rid of all thise nitrates before adding stock.

 

[yudhas]

What I don't understand is that today I did a 30% pwc; both nitrites and nitrates level haven't changed at all from before and after the pwc. How is that happening?