Should I Do A Water Change?

[jay0884]

My ammonia doses are getting broken down now in 24 hrs. But my nitrites are turning over really slowly and my nitrates were off the chart. So I did about a 90 to 95 percent water change but didn't want to dump the water in my filters so I wouldn't disturb the good bacteria. After the water change tho my nitrites were still off the chart over 5 ppm and my nitrates were about 40 ppm. Should I do another water change and this time clean out the filters??

 

[TwoTankAmin]

If one keeps adding ammonia that gets processed in 24 hours to a tank that does not also have sufficient nitrite oxidizing bacteria, the result is a continuing build up of nitrite and that often results it stalling the cycle and/or killing off some or all of the bacteria.
 
The dosing guidelines in the fishless cycling article on this site were designed to prevent this possibility when they are followed. When one goes "off the reservation" and decides to change the ammonia dosing, they also change the results coming for nitrite and nitrate.