Fishless Cycle Question

[hellog0odfriend]

im a month or so into my fishless cycle and nitrites quickly rose to 5+ ppm within 10 days of the start of the cycle. Since then it hasn't gone down and has remained 5+ ppm. Ammonia however takes only 24 hrs to go from 4 ppm to 0. I have done quite a few water changes to try to get the nitrite levels down but has not worked. So I guess my question is, is it normal for the nitrites to remain at 5+ for 3weeks straight or am I just being a little bit impatient? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

[drobbyb]

Sometimes it takes a while. I would wait and see what happens, give it another week or two.

 

[OldMan47]

It does indeed take a long time for the nitrite spike to pass. In your position I would do a couple of truly large water changes, right down to the substrate each time, to reduce the nitrites to a value I could measure. After that a dose of ammonia to about 2 ppm would be appropriate because all traces of ammonia would be gone. the 2 ppm is a good target dose of ammonia until you reach the final cycle stage where you are trying to get your tank to process 5 ppm of ammonia in 12 hours.

 

[hellog0odfriend]

Thanks for the reply guys. So from here on out just dose the tank to 2ppm rather than the normal 4 or 5?

 

[waterdrop]

Right, we feel that dropping your ammonia dosing to only 2 or 3ppm during the nitrite spike period helps a little to lower the overall amount of nitrite and nitrate being pumped in to the system. Its known that excess nitrite and nitrate slows N-Bac (the nitrite oxidizing bacteria) development a little.

Once the nitrite spike phase finally breaks (when you observe nitrite dropping to zero within 24 hours) then its time to start slowly bringing the ammonia dose back up until it again reaches the 4 to 5ppm that we used back in the beginning of the fishless cycle. At the end of the fishless cycle we ideally want the biofilter to be able to clear all 5ppm of ammonia to zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite within 12 hours.

The nitrite spike phase can indeed be a good deal longer than the earlier phase and it can seem to take forever.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[hellog0odfriend]

Aww man.... I wish I knew this way earlier. This little info managed to slip past all my research. Oh well, better late than never! Thanks for info!

 

[waterdrop]

Don't worry about it much, its just a little "tweak" we like to do and its helpfulness remains not that well proven. The overwhelming factor remains the actual slowness with which these bacteria both reproduce and build up "biofilms" that have structures that help support still more colony growth. Even under ideal conditions, they are slow at this, so all our "tweaks" are not expected to make much improvement anyway. Even bigger than the growth slowness factor is the universal issue of impatience among all of us, its just really hard since we were already excited to have a finished tank when we first started looking in to buying equipment! We can't help ourselves!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LondonguyJ]

I just want to add that you should keep an eye on your ph levels. If you see a significant drop then do a full water change. A low PH will also slow the cycling process.

J

 

[hellog0odfriend]

Thanks WD. I guess I just gotta be a little more patient!

Oh and I haven't been testing my pH but I will start to now that you mentioned it. Thanks!

So what ill do now is do a major water change down to the substrate and dose to only 2 ppm until nitrite spike has passed. Once it has, go back up to 4 until both are processed within 12 hrs. Is this correct?

 

[waterdrop]

Yup