Tank Cycle

[RPC]

Hello, as the thread suggests, fairly new fish keeper, I has a small 23ltr tank before but have just upgraded to an 80ltr Tank. As I'm sure you've heard before, I didn't cycle my tank before adding my Fish, as you can imagine, I lost 4 of my fish. Which I had many a sleepless night over. I googled and Googled and did all the stuff I was directed to. Water changes daily, low feeding, adding moss balls and an air stone for oxygen, slowly lowered temperature and kept the lights on low. My tank has cleared of the horrific milky look now and is pretty much crystal clear. But I bought some test strips as it's only been 6 days since I set my tank up and i was doubtful it had cycled. When I tested for ammonia, the results were 0 but after leaving the strip for about 10 minutes, it was off the darkest colour on the chart, which is the accurate reading? The first or the second?

 

[Essjay]

How long do the instructions say to wait? The colour will change after the stated time.

You don't mention nitrite, do you have a tester for that? Ammonia goes up first, followed by nitrite so you need to be able to test for both.
If you need to get a nitrite tester, liquid testers are more accurate than strips.

 

[RPC]

They say to wait 60 seconds, which I did so and then that's when I got the reading of 0. Nitrite is also 0. I got some of the 6 in 1 test strips and then separate for ammonia. All my my Ph and nitrates were good, my hardiness was quite high though. I am going to invest in the liquid testers, the strips were all I could afford at the time

 

[RPC]

They say to wait 60 seconds, which I did so and then that's when I got the reading of 0. Nitrite is also 0. I got some of the 6 in 1 test strips and then separate for ammonia. All my my Ph and nitrates were good, my hardiness was quite high though. I am going to invest in the liquid testers, the strips were all I could afford at the time