Question about fish in cycle

[Elquan]

Hi,

My daughter and I recently set up the old 10g aquarium that has been in my parents' attic since my youth. We started everything up based on advice from our local specialty aquarium store. We are using distilled water supplemented with 2 Tbsp of API freshwater aquarium salts and (so far) about a tsp of neutral buffer. We have had 3 juvenile bleeding heart tetras in the tank for 17 days. We added a dose of API Quickstart and the whole bag of tank water from the fish store when we added the fish. We have been feeding a small amount of micro pellet food once or twice per day.

I have been measuring ammonia with API's ammonia test kit and other parameters with the 6 in 1 test strips every couple days since we added fish. At its peak, we had somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 ppm ammonia. That was at around one week after adding the fish. We are currently sitting at close to, but not quite 0 ammonia. There was the barest detectable tinge of green in the ammonia when I last tested. Our pH is pretty steady at 6.8 or just below.

The fish are happy. I've seen no sign of stress and they eat voraciously at every feeding taking all the pellets we feed within 30 seconds or so.

I'm puzzled though because I still haven't been able to detect any nitrite or nitrate in the water. There is clearly ammonia entering the system. We had a small spike in the week after we added fish and began feeding. And the ammonia is being converted into something since the level hasn't continued to rise... I would have expected to see some nitrite or nitrate by now, but we haven't seen it yet.

Our fish store recommended adding one or two more fish every couple weeks until we reach our desired stocking level, but I'd like to know we have a good population of bacteria working before we make another addition to the tank. I assumed that presence of some nitrate would be the indicator for that. Do we just wait a little longer?

Edit: Just a little more information. Tested the water again tonight. I have zero ammonia now and if there's any nitrite or nitrate it's certainly not obvious to me on the test strip.

Hardness is around 50 dgh.

Also, to head off one possible question; we're using distilled water because our tap water tested at 2ppm ammonia. I figured with a 10g it wouldn't be that much of an extra expenditure and it'd be one less thing to worry about.

Hello there is no worries just let the tank cycle. 4 to 6 weeks it will be fine.