Filter Medium From Lfs

[Pennymom]

My LFS gave me a piece yesterday about 3" x 3" and I put the whole piece in the filter of the 5-gallon tank I am cycling for a Betta. Is it a big enough piece that I could put half of it in the filter of my 10-gallon tank? Here are the stats:

10-gallon tank (after a 2-gal PWC today)
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 40 or 80 (the colors are so close I can't tell)

5-gallon tank
ammonia 0.5
nitrites 0
nitrates 10
It's in the middle of fishless cycling and I have never gotten a nitrite spike. Is that because of the cycled filter medium?

Should I add more ammonia? It's confusing since I added the filter medium as to whether I should continue with the "add and wait" method or wait for the ammonia and nitrites to stay at 0 for a week and watch the nitrates, do the water change and add the Betta. There are plants in the tank at this point.

Never mind. I just re-read my notes about "add and wait" and discovered I need to continue to add ammonia until it reads 0 in 12 hours or less AND that the bacteria need ammonia or they will die.

 

[Danno]

How long has the tanks been running?

 

[Pennymom]

How long has the tanks been running?

I started the fishless cycling on April 27th and got my first nitrite spike yesterday so it looks like everything is going according to schedule. The ammonia dropped to almost 0 yesterday after I raised it to 3 the day before and the nitrites are off the chart. Raised the ammonia yesterday to 3+ and it was down again this morning to almost 0 and nitrites were off the chart again.

I think I'm okay now and understand what I am doing, thanks to the pinned thread. Excellent forum! Ann

 

[timmystood]

If you've got mature media then you want to add fish ASAP before the bacteria dies.

 

[Pennymom]

If you've got mature media then you want to add fish ASAP before the bacteria dies.

OK, now I'm confused. I thought the ammonia was added to keep the bacteria alive and that I couldn't add fish with the nitrites so high.

My original question was whether I needed to keep adding ammonia since I had gotten the filter medium from the LFS even though I had never gotten the nitrite spike from the fishless cycling. Believing I needed to feed the bacteria ammonia since I had no fish and not wanting to have the bacteria die, I added ammonia and almost immediately got the nitrite spike. It was my understanding that adding the cycled medium only speeded up the process and was not a substitute for fishless cycling.