Cycling - Am I On The Right Track Now?

[kismet]

A week ago I replaced 3 gallons of my 8 gallon Biorb with healthy water from a friend's koi pond (the cycling on the Biorb was stalled with 1.0 ammonia, no nitrate or nitrite) - as mentioned in another post, I was most likely partly responsible for its stalling). I've been monitoring it since - in 48 hours the ammonia went down to between .25 and .5, but since has been between .5 and 1.0; nitrites and nitrates have remained steady at 0. What does this mean? Is there anything I should do? I have one guppy out of two I started with; the one died at a week but this one's made it five weeks out from there.

 

[OldMan47]

With ammonia between 0.5 and 1.0 and a fish in the tank, its time to do a large water change to make things safe for the fish by getting ammonia to less than 0.25 ppm. The water from another tank did almost nothing for the cycle because the bacteria don't really live free swimming in the water. The bacteria you are trying to culture live in the filter and on the surfaces of gravel, ornaments and even the tank itself. If there is any bacteria present, it is multiplying on the surfaces and will eventually get high enough in numbers to start affecting the water quality. When you reach the first plateau, you will have nitrites start climbing as the ammonia goes to near zero. At that point you need to start controlling the nitrites to less than 0.25 ppm with water changes until both nitrites and ammonia are staying at less than 0.25 ppm on their own. Only then should you begin to think about the rest of the fish you would like to have for your tank.

 

[kismet]

Thank you - That makes a lot of sense and I should have realized that. Part of my error was when I did a 50 percent water change a few weeks ago, I removed two artificial plants and put in another AND also changed the filter - I had no idea about the bacteria primarily growing on surfaces.

What percentage of water should be removed and replaced?

Again, thank you for your reply