Hayley's Cycle Log Pt 3

[snazy]

I disagree. Adding fish IS a solution. Her tank is processing ammonia and nitrite, just not a full dose. So, she can safely add some fish to her tank. As long as she takes it slowly, she can add more fish to the tank as it goes. With a very small amount of fish, like the 5 platies mentioned earlier, the tank will be fine. She has had this problem with each tank so far, and the fish haven't suffered. There has been a minor spike as far as I know in tank 1, but none of the others, and the spike was very extremely low concentration and only lasted a day, I believe.

You are right in a way. She can add fish, but whether she is ever going to be able to fully stock the problem tanks is a different question, because it seems something is causing it to cycle slowly. Even if she does, it may get dirty quite quick and eventually cause spikes and unstable tank.
But after being patient for so long cycling, I don't see a point to hurry. This is really a long time to cycle..
That's why I thought that the filters are not up to scratch maybe, but that's only one opinion of many.

A full fishless cycle gives you far more bacteria than you need for a decent stocking level. The bacteria would be sufficient for a very overstocked tank. Therefore I think that the tank will cope fine with a sensible stocking.

Hayz, I say go get some fish but perhaps not the rams straight away.

How do you know how much ammonia a fully stocked tank with fish will produce? It's not only the fish that produce the ammonia in a tank anyway.
In an uncycled tank stocked with fish to the top you can get spikes of over 8ppm ammonia in some cases. So they must be producing quite a lot.
She is adding 4-5ppm maybe that can't get processed in 24 hours at the moment.
Problem maybe something else, bacteria died over a low Ph, etc...