Ok, bear with me whilst i give the background.
I had an established Malawi Trigon350 running for years, due to some sort of disease outbreak, all but a few got wiped out recently. Now i keptthe tank/equipment running, but obviously with not much bacteria being processed through the filters. The last few fish went back to the lfs.
So i took out all existing gravel/rock, and rescaped as a planted community setup. I have been cycling for a couple of weeks now, the Ammonia is at 0, Nitrite has been at 0.25, with nitrate at very high levels - 75mg. I did a water change to bring this down, but it went back up after a week. I have been dosing ammonia on a daily basis to 3ppm.
After redosing with ammonia when i check after 12 hours, this shows as 0ppm. The Nitrite is however not moving from 0.25- its never been higher than this. The nitrates are sky high, which is leaving me puzzled where i am in the cycle? i tested my tapwater for levels just to ensure the tests were not reporting faulse results, and these came back as 0 for Ammonia & Nitrite.
I introduced some plants half way through, but not sure whether this would have had an impact on the result i'm getting with the Nitrite?
Any suggestions/ideas most welcome
Ta.
I had an established Malawi Trigon350 running for years, due to some sort of disease outbreak, all but a few got wiped out recently. Now i keptthe tank/equipment running, but obviously with not much bacteria being processed through the filters. The last few fish went back to the lfs.
So i took out all existing gravel/rock, and rescaped as a planted community setup. I have been cycling for a couple of weeks now, the Ammonia is at 0, Nitrite has been at 0.25, with nitrate at very high levels - 75mg. I did a water change to bring this down, but it went back up after a week. I have been dosing ammonia on a daily basis to 3ppm.
After redosing with ammonia when i check after 12 hours, this shows as 0ppm. The Nitrite is however not moving from 0.25- its never been higher than this. The nitrates are sky high, which is leaving me puzzled where i am in the cycle? i tested my tapwater for levels just to ensure the tests were not reporting faulse results, and these came back as 0 for Ammonia & Nitrite.
I introduced some plants half way through, but not sure whether this would have had an impact on the result i'm getting with the Nitrite?
Any suggestions/ideas most welcome
Ta.
