Questions about cycling

[yudhas]

Hi guys,

I have been doing a fishless cycling now for almost three weeks. It's been going pretty well so far. However, I have a few questions in regards to the cycling. I've been adding pure ammonia to about 4ppm, it's doing just fine. Nitrites are present at about 5 ppm and Nitrates is now 160ppm. Three days ago Nitrates was well above that and I did a 50% pwc. It brought down the Nitrates to 40ppm.

I've been feeding the bacteria ammonia everyday as in the span of 24 hours the ammonia usually goes from 4ppm to 0.25ppm. It never goes all the way down to 0ppm. It always goes to 0.50ppm or 0.25ppm. I've not added fish yet as I'm currently building a cabinet to hold my tank as the current stand is just a metal stands and my wife doesn't like it. So I'm making one and it won't be ready for another couple of days. I know that the day before I add fishes I'm going to do a 90% water change. That's when I will switch the base as I have a decent size tank (it's 85 gallon).

So my question is is that ok when I re-dose the ammonia to 4ppm but then 24 hours later it goes down to only 0.50 or 0.25ppm? Or I have to wait until it goes all the way down to 0ppm? What about the Nitrates, what is a good level?

Thanks

 

[cfosgate]

You're on the right track. Keep dosing up to 4 ppm ammonia daily until nitrites show up then back off to 2 ppm ammonia daily. When ammonia and nitrites reach zero dose once more and if zero the next day then you are cycled. Do a big water change to remove nitrates and you are good to go.

 

[yudhas]

Nitrites is there and so is nitrates. So I should just dose 2ppm until I stock it?

 

[cfosgate]

Keep dosing to 2 ppm until nitrites and ammonia read zero, then dose again and check in 24 hours. If zero again do a big water change to remove all thise nitrates and then you are ready to add your stock.

 

[yudhas]

Since my tank is quite heavily planted, I've started putting flourish and flourish excel to help with my plant growth. I also have a 10,000K T5 white, 2x6,500K CFL white, and magenta forgot what nm.

Before I put the two seachem, my water started to have some algae. I read that if you add some fertilizers it'll help reduce the algaes. Is that right?