Any Advice

[ae.felstead]

My daughter 4 weeks into a fishless cycle, all has been well until now. Amonia high, Nitrite was 0 now high, Ph was 7.8 now below 6, can anyone please advise.

 

[Squid]

I suspect the Ammonia levels are now dropping as the nitrite levels rise. One thing that I noticed when doing a fishless cycle is that the KH crashed, and the PH dropped huge amounts. This caused my cycle to halt and even take a step back, where i noticed some ammonia levels appearing again. The only way I could rectify this was to perform a large (about 75%) water change and add more ammonia again as normal. This seemed to kick the cycle back into action again.I doubt you are at this point yet, but it's work keeping an eye on.

So.. if the ammonia levels are reducing and the nitrite levels are up, you can now expect to wait about twice as long as it took the amonia levels to drop in order to see the nitrite levels drop. So watch out for the nitrates and be patient there .. When the tank can cycle 3-4ppm of ammonia in 12-24 hours where the ammonia and nitrite levels are reduced to 0, thats when you do the big 75-80% water change and add your fish. Adding the fish is best done withing about 12 hours or so, or the bacteria will start to die off. I would recommend adding somewhere between 50 & 70% of the stock, and remember that the tank is cycled but not mature, so be careful on your stock selection avoiding the more fragile critters.

Hope that helps

Squid