My Fishless Cycle Diary

[waterdrop]

I'm up to day 50 now. I haven't been posting constant updates cos I must be boring! (and because nothing much has changed recently). For the last 10 days or so, ammonia has been going down from 5ppm to zero in 12 hours, but in that time, nitrite hasn't budged. At 12 hours, the nitrite is always on 5ppm, and after 24 hours, it's always on zero.

I wondered...is it normal for nitrite to take this long to start going down? At the moment, it's nowhere near being gone in 12 hours!

You haven't posted very many pH or nitrate(NO3) readings for us to also ponder. It may be that a 90% water change with recharge of ammonia would serve as a good kickstart for you at this late stage. Especially if pH has dropped very much and/or nitrates test as being pretty high. In cases where the final stretch of fishless cycling (the period between when nitrites are dropping in 24 hours and when they are dropping in 12 hours) is going slowly, I often feel that weekend large water changes with gravel cleaning serve to get the excess nitrates and nitrites out of their, often pull the pH back up and finally, also serve as good practice for the weekly gravel-clean-water-changes that the beginner will shortly be having to do with fish in there!

~~waterdrop~~