Nitrates Early And Odd Readings

[friendlyfishy777]

As every knows I've been cycling my tank for a week now (read my cycle lon for further details), I used dirty water from my friends goldfish at the start (that she had cleaned her filter media in), along with the pure ammonia. And just the other day my friend gave me more dirty water from another filter media clean (she has two large tanks).

Anyway, last night I just had this feeling to check readings again, even though it hadn't been the full 24 hours and I saw the ammonia was zero and the nitrite had dropped a lot too (from 1ppm to 25ppm). The Nitrite dropping had worried me as I expected it to rise sharply soon and spike, not be less than before. I dosed the tank back to 4ppm of Ammonia (this was at 1am this morning, UK time).

I just checked the readings again (now at 5pm in the evening) and I have these readings:

AMMONIA 1.00ppm
NITRATE 1.00ppm

I thought I'd just take a look and see if I somehow have Nitrates, and I do!

NITRATES 80ppm

So clearly my tank is cycling at an unusual rate ...

thing is, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now!

How much Ammonia to add, or anything else.
Please help!

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Hopefully others will confirm but I believe...

Once your bacteria can process 4ppm within 12 hours to get "double zeros" (no ammonia or nitrite), start a "qualifying week" to verify 7 consecutive days of 12 hour "double zeros." If results are good, you are ready for your first fish, after a good sized water change of ~75%.

In theory, you could add several species in one hit (because a normally stocked tank should never produce the equivalent of 4ppm in a 12 hour period), but this increases the risk of adding an ill fish to your tank which may have something infectious.
If you wanted to play things safer, you would buy your most peaceful but hardy group and then treat this tank as a QT (quarantine tank) for several weeks. In the meantime you could cycle another small filter and then use this in a seperate QT (plastic tub would do, far cheaper) when buying your next fish, adding them to your main tank if all is well after a few weeks. And so it goes on, buying your less hardy and most teritorial fish last, only adding each new purchase to the main tank when you are happy nobody is ill.

Do you have a full stocking list planned, or at least your "must have" fish that tankmates must fit around as regards temperature; water flow; aggression etc.?