H2O level question

[fishielover]

My tank is cycling for a while now and levels have been up, and i have been doing all my changes and things like that. But now my ammonia has dropped to darn near 0, my Nitrate is around 20, but my nitrite has spiked to about 3.0 or maybe even a little higher. Is this the right thing to happen? I thought once the ammonia dropped the nitrite would be dropping too.
The fish look fine and are not acting any different. What do i do? Am i getting normal findings?

Thanks for all your insight. This site has done nothing but help me tremendously.
Thanks again.

 

[Pathagor]

Im a bit of a newb, but as fars as I know, when your ammonia drops after it has spiked, it means the bacteria is doing its job and is converting the ammonia into nitrite - that is why you will now get a rise in nitrite and it will spike shortly after.

To my knowledge the two spikes should not coincide, but the nitrite spike will happen after an indetermineate period of time after the ammonia spike.

I wouldn't be too worried - can anyone else confirm my theory???

 

[SirMinion]

Correct.

Fish eat food
Fish makes waste (including ammonia)
Nice bacteria eat ammonia
Nice bacteria produce waste (nitrites)
Different and slower growing bacteria eat nitrites
Different and slower growing bacteria produce waste (nitrates)
Water changes remove nitrates

 

[David]

If your fish look fine, your tests may be inaccurate. I don't think I've ever seen a healthy fish in a tank that has nitrite levels of 3.0 That is extremely high. (My fish looked quite sickly when my nitrites were 0.8 )

 

[Opcn]

Some fish can handle nitrites up to 7.0 at times (Not good) the reason nitrite keeps going up after Amonia is going down is that the bacteria that are responseable for Oxidiseing nitrite cannot reproduce in the presence of amonia above ~.4 ppm Do lots of water changes to get rid of nitrite and all should be well.