Cycle Gone Haywire!

[**sarahp**]

OK - did all my research and got my cycle up and running 4 weeks ago. Did everything according to the pinned thread by rdd and all was going really well. Got my ammonia spike and fall within 7 days, then got my nitrIte spike which lasted about 2-ish weeks - then finally at the 3rd week got my zero's!!!!!!!! Yeeeeeehaaaaaaa thought I - but no twas not to be I did a 50% water change and then carried on with adding ammonia as I wanted to be absolutely sure everything was ok - good job I checked because for the last week things have been a little weird!!

I add enough ammonia at 9pm to bring it up to 5ppm. By 7am ammonia is back to zero - brilliant!! However, NitrIte is taking til 7pm - 22 hours - to get to zero not so brilliant!!

So my question - do I go back a stage and add ammonia each time it gets to zero and ignore the nitrItes again for a while, or do I only add ammonia when both it and nitrIte are at zero?

Has anyone else experienced/heard of this happening before?

 

[alexpitcher]

Hi Sarahp, i'm having the same type of issues. On Wednesday all tests showed 0, so i thought great get some fish this weekend, put some ammonia in Thursday 6ml (120 litre tank) to keep my bacteria fed, tested Thursday night when i got home from work 4ppm, Friday morning 4ppm, Friday night 4ppm and all the while my nitrites were showing 1ppm. did a small water change, did another test this morning about 10 mins ago nitrite 0ppm, ammonia 0.50. Nitrates will be off the scale but i expect that. Will be doing a 80-90% water soon to see what that does because i think my cycle has finished. Will do another test on ammonia soon to see what has happened. Really weird test results though