Cyclinghelp Needed

[markandhisfish]

i had a mature tank (over 2 years) whichi gradually sold off alll the stock so the tankcould be re-setup for discus. to keep the existing filter alive while tank was unstocked i have been dosing 500m of ammonia. i had some die-off as expected with the reduced bioload from the gradual stock thinning. for a good 3 weeks now i have been going thru 5ppm of ammonia in 12 hours no problem, but the nirites just arent doing anything. dosed to 5ppm yesterday evening , tested this morning ammonia 0 nitrites 5ppm.

i have never had to cycle a tank before as i bought a redy mature filter with thistank. idid think maybe a ph crash but ihave been doing water change weekly as i would anyway and 2 days agoi ithad a 100% water changewheni broke down to re do substrate etc.

is this normal or is something wrong ?
its worth mentioning that friday i added a 2nd external whichi seeded with all my sponges from the internal and a good handfull of media from the existing external . but still had the nitrite issues before i did this .

 

[minxfishy]

Strange as it should have caught up by now, although nitrite always takes longer to process, after 3 weeks I would expect to see it lowering by this point. I would drop the ammonia dosing back down to 3ppm to allow the nitrIte to catch up, then back up to 5ppm. NitrIte will suddenly catch up and go to zero quickly its just frustrating waiting for it to do so.

 

[markandhisfish]

ok cheers mags il make tomorrows dose 3ppm

 

[markandhisfish]

as if by magic nitrites have suddenly caught up ,as if it happened overnight!! todays test was the 1st time that both ammonia and nitrites are at zero

 

[waterdrop]