Fishless Cycle - Progress ?

[krisb60]

Started my fishless cycle 2-weeks ago.
1 week ago, the ammonia had dropped for the first time from 5 to 3 so I added ammonia. The level rose to 5 in the next 24-hours.
I am slightly concerned that my reading of 5 is incorrect, as I have big difficulty interpreting the colour charts of my Nutrafin kit.

Over the same 24-hours, nitrite rose from 0.3 to 0.5.

HOWEVER for the last week, ammonia level has been unchanged (note I am NOT adding any ammonia as not reading any reduction).
Nitrite might have risen from 0.5 to 0.8 but again my Nutrafin kit is mighty difficult to interpret and currently the colour could reflect anything between 0.3 and 1.2 (it is a completely different shade, much brighter than the dull shades on the colour chart). But I reckon it must be between 0.5 and 0.8 if the ammonia is unchanged.
Tank temperature constant at 27c.

Aeration is from both a pump and the venturi in the filter.
No real plants nor bogwood to upset the readings.
Nitrate level has been 15 on both readings this week.
PH is contstant at 8.0

Now before I see that word "patience" again, should I be worried that progress at the end of 2-weeks appears negligible, despite progress at the end of week 1 being 'as expected'?

More than willing to be patient, but if something is wrong, or the process has stalled, the sooner I take remedial action I guess the better.
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[tunerhead24]

Next time you see the ammonia levels change again don't add more till it drops to zero then topp off to 5 ppm. It took my fishless cycle almost 2 weeks till anything happened, I'm sorry to say it but patience my friend patience.

 

[waterdrop]

The main things that can be wrong in the early stages (or to say "the problems we see the most") are pH out of range and filters that have zeolite or other ammonia/nitrite chemical reducers in them.

Since your pH is reported at 8.0, which is not only fine, but even in the optimal 8.0-8.4 range (for fastest growth of these particular chemolithoautotrophs,) I would say that is not a problem. And we assume you are at about the optimal temp. (about 29C/84F.)

The zeolite type problem could still be there. Ideally you want just ceramic rings/pebbles, sponge or bioballs as your biomedia choices and a bit of polyfloss perhaps for fine mechanical media. But you don't need carbon or certainly not any other exotic stuff like zeolite in there. (The problem being that if you remove all the ammonia chemically, there is none for the bacteria to eat. Then when the chemical remover is saturated, ammonia suddenly reappears and kills your fish because there no biological filter has ever been established.)

~~waterdrop~~
edit: I should add that I'm just commenting on possible problems because you asked. I expect the most likely scenerio is just that because you are only at two weeks, the A-Bac population has just not taken off yet, very, very common at two weeks. Remember, everyone likes to quote 3 week fishless cycles, but those are only best case and many more are 2 months in reality.