Cycling At A Stand Still?

[BlueDragon]

So I've been Fish-in cycling for two weeks exactlly today. Started on the 22nd of May. And all was going well. The Nirates and Nirites were very slowly going up (see post: "clearly I've gone so wrong somewhere") before the Nirite went back down to zero from 0.5.

The results at the minuet are

In the main tank:

Amonia: 0 / 0.5

PH: 6.4
KH: 50
GH: 125
Nirate: 10
Nirite: 0

The smaller 'quarentine' tank:

Amonia: 0 / 0.5

PH: 6.4
KH: 50
GH: 125
Nirate: 10
Nirite: 0

I have a reading of 0.5 of amonia in my tap water and was told this is why it's showing in the tank results.

But this has been the constant result for over a week now.

I was changing just less than half each tanks water, but have uped it to over half out of each tank now to try and get things going again, but it's not working. I still have the gravel I got from the petshop hung up in the main tank and on the ground of the smaller tank. I haven't touched either of the filters. What could be going on?

I'm not worried really 'cause my Fish seem totally happy. Full of colour and I also have seven perfectly healthy fry too. I know that fry are a good indication of tank quality, but so far I've had no deaths other than a very unfortunate occurence where two got stuck in their net. But as far as their health goes they seem fine and are all growing like weeds. Even the tiniest little fry are visably growing bigger every day now they have some good feeds in them. So I can't imagine the water is all that bad. It would seem I've never had it better. But why are my results not changing?

I change the water every morning and test it about six hours later. I was told this was a good idea to give the bacteria time to do their thing. And there must be some bacteria in there somwhere by now?

Could this just be the calm before the storm? Should I expect a spike soon? Or is something wrong?


Also I've been using a liquid bacteria treater just to help start things off and so far have used three bottles. It's not overly expensive but at nearly three fifty a bottle it's starting to add up. I've just ran out of the third bottle and was wondering if I could just stop using it now things have been going for a couple of weeks? People say it's not really worth using at all so could I just save my money now?

 

[4seasons]

What exactly do you mean when you say:
Amonia: 0 / 0.5
I understand you have .5ppm ammonia in you tap water but are you saying that the reading is dropping to 0 in 6 hours? Or are you saying that ammonia isn't rising over your base of .5ppm?
Your PH is helping your fish stay healthy as a lower PH makes ammonia less toxic. But as your cycle continues and nitrite becomes the issue the lower PH will make nitrite more toxic. A PH of 6.4 will make your cycle slow anyway. If after only 2 weeks you aren't showing any nitrites I would think you have at least another week to go maybe 3-4 weeks before you see nitrites climbing. My PH was much higher than yours and it took 3 1/2 weeks before I saw the first sign of nitrites in my fish in cycle.

 

[BlueDragon]

The ammonia is being a bit hard to read, and has been like that for a while. Looking at the colour on the strip just with my eyes it looks yellow (zero) but if I put it up to the chart it looks light green against the yellow. So I'll put it up against the light green (0.5) and it looks yellow again. So I'm never sure what to class it as.

I did have a rise in Nirites. They went up to 0.5 for a few days just a few days back. But now they've gone back down to zero. Didn't think much of it 'cause it was such a small rise.

The PH did go up just for a day or two to 6.8. But that was it. Athough thinking back now it went up before the Nitrites did. Could there be a link there? Has that little short rise been the reason for the rise in nitrites?

I suppose there has been slight rises in PH and then nitrites but I didn't think anything of it. Was that a spike? I was expecting it to be something... bigger than than : /

I couldn't be going through one of these funny silent cycle things could I? What with the slight rises and now no change afterwards?