Day 18

[StarOrbs]

Well I've been doing fishless cycling for about 18days and the past 5 days the ammonia has been at 1.2PPM everyday and hasn't budged and my nitrite is 0 and nitrate is 0. I haven't got any nitrite in a long time which would make you think it's cycled but then I was told that ammonia should be able to go down from 5ppm to 0ppm in 24 hours.. I just don't see that happening.

Since I'm going to be getting fish this week I'm just going to get the ammonia reading down to 0PPM by doing water changes than I'll add a few fish and see how the tank does and go from there. And no I haven't added ammonia in about a week because I wanted to see if it could go down at all and it hasn't even changed.

 

[yvez9]

it's weird that ammonia hasn't dropped in a week

did your nitrite readings spike then go back to 0?
have you tested regular tap water for ammonia to see if it's at 0, maybe your test kit isn't giving good readings...

 

[StarOrbs]

My tap water is 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, and 0 ammonia. Yah I had one spilke of nitrite and thats it.

 

[Slyspy]

I would suggest that either your test kit is wrong and your tank is cycled or that you have done something wrong yourself meaning that the tank is not cycled. Have your water tested by your LFS and see what results they get. From my experience 18 days is not long enough to cycle a tank although you may have had a nitrite spike. The nitrite to nitrate part is the longest and you may have made a mistake which has stalled the process.

Edit:
Looking at your cycling record you have not had a nitrite spike yet and your doses of ammonia have been somewhat erratic. I just add the same amount each day and reduce the quantity (but not the frequency) a bit when I get the nitrite spike. Its worked twice for me and up until August I knew nothing about fish keeping.