No Nitrite After 15 Days Cycling

[twintanks]

It's been a while since I did a tank cycle and methods have changed a bit. I have been following the fishless cycle instructions given on this website. Tank size 110 litres.
No decor in it apart from gravel (including some from an established goldfish tank).
Tank heater initially set at 21 degrees C but raised later
New Fluval U3 internal filter
Air bubbler
 
Tank initially seeded with material squeezed from a sponge located in the filter of the established tank. Also some gravel.
I purchased a small bottle of 35% ammonia being sold locally, that was specially for use in aquariums. I used your calculator to work out the
volume required to create 3ppm in the tank, but got it a bit wrong and had to change the water in the tank. Eventually got the reading to 3ppm.
The pH reading was a problem because it was 7.6+ and I have been unable to get an API kit for the higher range (so far).
 
Day 2 and 3 didnt test.
Day 4: ammonia 2-3ppm  nitrite 0
Day 7: ammonia between 1 and 2ppm  nitrite 0
Day 9: temperature increased to 26C.  Ammonia between 1 and 2 ppm  nitrite 0
Day 11: ammonia 1 to 2ppm  nitrite 0
Day 13: ammonia 1 to 2ppm  nitrite 0
Day 14: ammonia 1ppm  nitrite 0
 
The website graphs suggest I should be seeing some nitrite by now, but the testkit is a perfect pale blue for 0ppm. And yes the testkit is
"in date". I am using  API dropper-bottle  kits for all the testing. No further additions have been made to the tank, in terms of ammonia or decor.
Any thoughts as to when nitrite might appear?
 
 

 

[Ltygress]

Since you used so much established media, you might not. Ever. It looks like your ammonia already "spiked" and then kinda fell again. By the time it falls you should have seen some nitrite coming up. But you aren't. And your ammonia barely seemed to spike at all, too. I have a feeling the bacteria from the used gravel and squeezed sponge filter already did the work for what you're adding to the tank to cycle it.

But that's not to say you're out of the blue, either. Fishless cycling is safer for fish, but it isn't always sufficient. The actual fish will probably produce a bio load larger than what you're putting in the tank now. So if at all possible, just add a few fish at a time, or make sure you get all young fish that will need to grow a bit. That way the strain on the existing biological filter isn't bad, and it can quickly catch up to the added fish.

 

[twintanks]

That's interesting to know. The new tank, at the moment, will only be housing one goldfish, which has been having fisticuffs with its other tank companion and was the loser (so to speak). Since the ammonia is still at around 1ppm, I presumably have the choice of waiting for it to reach zero or bailing out some of the tank water and replacing it with fresh.
I don't want to put the fish into an environment that isn't "quite there" yet.

 

[Gruntle]

Can you check the ammonia and nitrate (make sure to shake the absolute living daylights out of your nitrate reagent bottles to get a reasonably accurate number) reading in your tap water? By rights, if your ammonia is dropping then your nitrites should be rising. If your tank's bacteria load is processing nitrite through to nitrate (could you also check your tank's nitrate reading) then that should have risen to above what your tap water shows.
 
I'm a bit confused by the numbers, but the good news is you don't have fish in the tank so they're not in danger. If your tank is processing ammonia through to nitrate then by rights your ammonia should have dropped. If your nitrite bacteria is indeed processing through to nitrate, I believe your ammonia bacs should have come up to speed before that happened.
 
It's an interesting situation you have there.

 

[the_lock_man]

Something's definitely not right somewhere. There is no reason why the initial drop in ammonia from 2-3 to 1-2 has stopped. The bacteria didn't just say, "You know what, I'm full right now, I'll finish it off later." I would say that there is a misread somewhere, either on the first reading, or all the subsequent readings.
 
The issue with seeing nitrate readings at this point is that (A) you don't know what the tapwater nitrate level is, and even if you did, 3ppm ammonia will process to roughly 10ppm nitrate. The difference in colour between tapwater and tankwater is going to be difficult to discern.
 
I'd be inclined to pop in another 3ppm ammonia, and see what happens to the readings after that.

 

[Ltygress]

I never thought to ask...

You said no decor in it, but what about plants? Do you have lots of those? None? Some?

THAT would explain why both Nitrite and Nitrate aren't showing up. If you have TONS of plants in there, they'd eat it all up.

 

[the_lock_man]

I never thought to ask...

You said no decor in it, but what about plants? Do you have lots of those? None? Some?

THAT would explain why both Nitrite and Nitrate aren't showing up. If you have TONS of plants in there, they'd eat it all up.

 
But the tons of plants would also consume the ammonia.