No Nitrites?

[AshleyNZ]

So I added 2ppm of ammonia to my cycling tank at 8pm last night, after it reached 0. Now it is currently almost 5pm the next day, and I have 0.50ppm of ammonia and 10ppm of nitrate...but even after re-testing I have 0 nitrites... 
What would cause this? I do have a few plants in the aquarium. Advice please

 

[b3cca]

Your ammonia is either false reading and/or is reading ammonium or combined ammonia/ammonium
 
Your nitrifying bacs are stronger and processing the nitrite better and faster than the ammonia ones .
 
You have nitrate in your supply water

 

[daizeUK]

Unlikely - the ammonia-eating bacs always multiply faster than the nitrite-eating bacs.
 
AshleyNZ - when you saw ammonia dropping the first time, did you see nitrites start to appear?
 
Do you have plants in the aquarium that might be processing the ammonium?

 

[AshleyNZ]

I have Anubias nana, Ambulia and Windelov in the aquarium. Tap water has 0 nitrates in it. 
I didnt test anything other than ammonia that first time, if I did it wouldve been incorrect anyway

 

[daizeUK]

Your plants may be absorbing some ammonium but I'll be quite surprised if they can make it disappear that fast.
 
I think there is more likely a problem with either your ammonia or nitrite test kits.
 
It might help if you start from the beginning and tell us the exact dates you added ammonia and performed tests with the results you got.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Also, lets not forget that live plants arrive with some amount of bacteria on them. So there is a double whammy at work. The plants will use some of the ammonium which means not of that will become nitrite. But then some of the nitrite bacs are also on the plants so they will be at work right away as well. So what one can see is ammonia dropping initially more from plants than bacteria which is why the ammonia is dropping. But there are nowhere near enough plants or hitchhiking bacteria to get the ammonia to 0.
 
So what we see is ammonia drops some but not nitrite shows up nor may any nitrate. And this just serves to highlight that fact that as live plants get incorporated into the cycling chores, it changes everything to some extent. but to what extent is not so easy to see and measure. One tank has six stem plants of variety A and another similar tank has 5 plants of variety B. How can we possibly know how much affect each has on ammonia in terms of what they may consume but also in terms of how much bacteria they brought in?
 
So while we know that adding plants can and does affect things, nailing down exactly how much isn't so simple.
 
I am confused by the above post that states:

 
So I added 2ppm of ammonia to my cycling tank at 8pm last night, after it reached 0. Now it is currently almost 5pm the next day, and I have 0.50ppm of ammonia and 10ppm of nitrate...but even after re-testing I have 0 nitrites...

 
What is at 5 ppm "it is currently almost 5pm"??? Can you please restate things so they are clearer because I am not sure what you are reporting. Hoe can adding 2 ppm of ammonia become 5 ppm and then .5 ppm in a matter of hours??

 

[Mamashack]

I think he meant the time was 5pm TTA tho it took me a couple of reads as I was also expecting to see ppm.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

AHA! That is just like what they show on the Brain games program- the mind completes things because it is used to seeing them in a certain way. I was expecting ppm and so my brain just inserted the missing p.
 
In that case what do we know about this tank.
 
2 ppm of ammonia appears to have been reduced to .5 ppm in about 21 hours. So 1.5 ppm was consumed/converted.
 
1.5 ppm of ammonia at most can produce 3.825 ppm of nitrite and 5.2 ppm of nitrate.
 
We see no nitrite which would suggest a some amount of ammonia was consumed by the plants. We also can assume some amount of ammonia is being dealt with by the bacteria. But we see no nitrite because, and this is a reasonale assumption, there are some number of nitrite converting bacs present and they handled whatever amount of nitrite came via the bacterial route. The nitrate reading is either off, as is fairly common, or else there was some nitrate in the water already.
 
When completing a cycle when there are plants involved the numbers are not normal. And where they will be the most unusual is in respect to nitrite for the reasons above. Similarly, plants will take up nitrate which makes relying on this number, even if the kit were dead on, hard to do as well. Therefore the most important thing to monitor is Ammonia. If this is 100% handled in 24 hours, it doesn't much matter exactly how much nitrite or nitrate one doesn't see. If the ammonia is gone and there is no nitrite, we know why. And this means the tank is effectively cycled. Things would be totally different were there no plants involved.

 

[AshleyNZ]

Thank you for those comments. I am now keeping a log and monitoring stats. What do you suggest I do now, TTA? 

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Basically you want your tank to be able to process 2 ppm of ammonia to 0 in 24 hours or less. You want there to be no nitrite as well at the same time. This means your are cycled to add fish. If at the 24 hour point after adding the ammonia you have any reading for either, you are not yet ready. So you need to wait until any ammonia and/or nitrite readings both are at 0 and then redose ammonia equivalent to 2 ppm. Test again in 24 hours.
 
You can repeat this add and test until you do get 0/0 in 24 hours (or less). Based on the information so far you look to be close to cycled and I do not think you should have to add ammonia more than once or twice more before the tank is ready.

 

[AshleyNZ]

Okay, thank you very much