Checking To See Where I Am In The Cycle

[TheMaEsTrO]

Happy New Year Everyone!

I have a 26 gallon bow front, 3 sterbai cats, 3 male platies (they get along peachy) and 5 black skirt tetras. Ive been doing a fish in cycle for about 20 days (not by choice, but by going to big box pet store). I have been dealing with ammonia (lots of water changes, minimum 50% or higher, several times a week, sometimes daily), but I havent had any nitrite or nitrate readings.

Recently I discovered a LFS and they were much more knowledgable and helpful. They gave me mature media and I added it a week ago... it was nice and brown and earthy smelling and they gave me enough to cover 1/3 of my filter. My ammonia was up to 1ppm when I received the media and I immediately did a 90 percent change and the level went to 0 (with no nitrite or nitrate as before).
Ive been checking my ammonia 2x daily since adding the media and it stayed at zero for a day, then has ever so slowly crept up, but a week later has maxed at .25, with no nitrites but with just over 15ppm of nitrates. Ive noticed the nitrates creeping up faster than the ammonia did (from yellow, to orange tinge, to darker to darkest today) but no nitrites. Can I assume that the lower level of ammonia with the low level of nitrate means that the media is working at its capacity and is (hopefully) building more capacity? Is the absence of nitrites because the media had both bacteria? I read on here that mature media contains way more nitrate producing bacteria than nitrite producing bacteria...is this the case?

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

[Prime Ordeal]

Your added media seems to be doing its job. You've got rising nitrate and zero nitrite so the nitrite oxidising bacteria (NOB) are fully doing their job. The ammonia oxidising bacteria (AOB) are clearly playing catch up, but they'll get there, just keep up with the water changes to keep ammonia below 0.25. The NOB are certainly more efficient at processing nitrite than the AOB are at processing ammonia but as to whether that is due to greater numbers or better processing efficiency (or a combination of both) is debatable.