Cycling Question

[jpast45]

I started cycling a 44 Gallon tank over a week and a half ago. When I started, I put some filter media from an established tank in the new one and cleaned it out inside the new tank. I then took it out to put it back in the established tank (the water in the new one was dechlorinated, that's it). I then put the ammonia drops in to get an appropriate level, then added "cycle".

Fast forward a week, I did an "Accidental" water change (canister filter output fell out of the tank, drained 12 gallons or so onto the floor), and filled it back up. The next day, I did a full water test, my ammonia is still at 2 ppm, my nitrites are at 0, but my nitrates are 10. Is this normal for nitrites to be at 0 and for the tank to take this long to get to 0 ammonia? I haven't added any since the first day, All that's happened since then is ammonia tests and put 2 plants in the tank yesterday to help the cycle.

Is this normal?

 

[OldMan47]

An uncycled tank with no real jump start can often take over 2 weeks to reach zero ammonia the first time. If you would have cleaned the other filter in your new tank, it might have given you a good start. Merely placing a bit of filter in the tank for a short time really did nothing to get the cycle started. The Cycle product is about as useless as any of the products are.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with OM47, we see the first drop to zero taking anywhere from 1 week to 2 weeks to even 3 weeks sometimes.

You may already have this in mind but it often helps to have some sort of roadmap image. Fishless cycles are extremely unpredictable, timewise, but we can make an imaginary roadmap of how one might go:

1) Phase one (before nitrite spike) 20 days - watching for ammonia to start dropping to zero and for a little nitrite to appear
2) Phase two (during nitrite spike) 20 days - nitrite test is at maximum, ammonia is dropping to zero daily
3) Phase three (after nitrite spike) 20 days - nitrite dropping to zero within 24 hours, waiting for zero in 12 hours
4) Qualifying week: 5-7 days - Once both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) have dropped to zero ppm within 12 hours you watch it do this for a week to be sure it wasn't a fluke. Then you do the big water change and acclimate your first stocking of fish.

Now, of course hardly anyone's real case would be 20,20,20 like this example, but overall we do see these three phases and we do see most fishless cycles taking somewhere from a month to 2.5 months overall, including user errors.

~~waterdrop~~