Finished Cycle Or Not?

Hi all,
I am new to the hobby have a tank since 14/10/10. 95 liters planted(not as heavily yet),some driftwood(did not drop PH as I thought at all),and 2 internal filters 1(Aquael Fan2+[450l/h]),2(aqua flow 100 this one with carbon also).Temperature at 24'Celsius, 4W/G light,will be 5W/G(have bulbs just not using them yet).Adding Fluorish Excel for plants as not that heavily planted.I decided for fish-cycling so the second week I got 3 zebra danios(so much movement for a newbie is amazing).I did a lot of research before on plants, fish,etc like 2 weeks nonstop to avoid mistakes.
Water parameters: tap water- PH= 8, GH= 4,KH= 3
tank water-PH= 8, GH=4-5, KH 8-9.
I have a professional API test kit.
My question is I still have some ammonia between 0.25 - 0.5 ppm, no NO2 at all and NO3 around 5ppm(probably plants keep it low I believe).
I also have bought a school of 6 Harlequin Rasboras, 28/10/10, and 4 Neon Tetras on 25/11/10.A few pond snails are now in tank thanks plants I believe.
Doing regularly weekly 20% water changes, vacuuming gravel as well as it gets a bit messy from waist.Not feeding fish a lot 3 times a day in small portions only flakes.(more freeze dried food ordered to make them happier).
I don't know if the tank has finished cycling yet as I still have ammonia in water, although never had an ammonia spike max at 1.0ppm but had an NO2 spike as you can see in the picture below so I am wondering what could be wrong?
Any advise please?

Your supposed to keep both ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm for a fish in cycle. Even if this requires large 50%+ water changes on a daily basis.

Uriel said:

Your supposed to keep both ammonia and nitrite below 0.25ppm for a fish in cycle. Even if this requires large 50%+ water changes on a daily basis.

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Thank you so that means the tank is not cycled yet right?
also want to correct that GH =8-9 and KH = 4-5.
But what is really confusing for me is the missing ammonia spike and present NO2 spike which is a bit strange as I haven't seen it anywhere.

Unless you have ammonia out of the tap, any amount of ammonia or nitrites present (unless some tank conditions were changed) would indicate that the cycle has yet to complete.

You may want to make sure that you aren't overfeeding or that you dont have any dead or decaying plant matter as those could bring ammonia to detectable levels.

Rynofasho said:

Unless you have ammonia out of the tap, any amount of ammonia or nitrites present (unless some tank conditions were changed) would indicate that the cycle has yet to complete.

You may want to make sure that you aren't overfeeding or that you dont have any dead or decaying plant matter as those could bring ammonia to detectable levels.

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Hmm, I never tought that tap water could contain Ammonia going to do a check now thank you, don't think there are any decaying plants, but will try to feed even tough the fish seems to eat all I give them straight away, will keep you posted.
Thank you all again.

So i am back just did the test and right out my tap water is showing 0.25ppm Ammonia and 0 nitrite. And I don't really know what can I do now with the tap water.If anyone has any suggestions what to do with it to make it safe?As is seems that I am actually adding even more ammonia with my water changes?

'Doing regular 20% water changes'.

When i had a constant test reading of ammonia during the first time i cycled (i used fish, not knowing the difference between this and 'fishless' cycling) i found i had to do daily water changes. About a third of my water every 2 days, but i still lost 4 fish.

And i stopped fedding them. They had nothing at all for 3 days at one point.

jahodienka

It's a bummer having ammonia in tap water, but from my limited experience, i would use Seachem Prime as the water conditioner and it's well know to convert ammonia to ammonium which is not harmful to fish. It will also condition your water by removing chlorines and chloramines.

How much dosage, may be more experienced members will hopefully advice on that.

I see this forum is so great, a lot of help and many different ideas,I want to thank you all guys for a fast response. I am using atm the API STRESS COAT to condition the water. I am thinking about one solution to this and hope someone has some experience with it. I want to buy a water filter e-spring product from Amway which makes your tap water all chlore, chlorine, bacteria etc free and leaves some minerals in the water.(also perfect to drink, so I would actually kill 2 flies with one hit. I would have great water to drink = I would never more have to buy any conditioners for my tank water and it would be safe= keeps minerals inside. Just need to go to friends house and test the water.
It`s a bit costly but I think it`s worth the money.
Has anyone out here any experience with this drinking water in here if so please respond.
Thank you.
BTW I will try feeding less, but fish looks quite well I believe, neons also even tho my water is PH8, well could be temporary OK.

We don't recommend water filters. They usually take out too many of the trace minerals that the fish and plants both need. The ammonia level in your tap water is not particularly surprising or high. The thing to do with that is simply to make your water changes during the fish-in cycling process be much, much more frequent and small. By only adding 10 to 25% fresh tap water, you will have quite a small amount of ammonia being added. By now you will have A-Bacs that will be processing a significant amount of this. Your danios have probably suffered a little gill and nerve damage but they are a species that can take this pretty well and hopefully will come through. It can take 6 weeks of this ongoing.

~~waterdrop~~

waterdrop said:

We don't recommend water filters. They usually take out too many of the trace minerals that the fish and plants both need. The ammonia level in your tap water is not particularly surprising or high. The thing to do with that is simply to make your water changes during the fish-in cycling process be much, much more frequent and small. By only adding 10 to 25% fresh tap water, you will have quite a small amount of ammonia being added. By now you will have A-Bacs that will be processing a significant amount of this. Your danios have probably suffered a little gill and nerve damage but they are a species that can take this pretty well and hopefully will come through. It can take 6 weeks of this ongoing.

~~waterdrop~~

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Thanks for your input about a water filter but:
I did some research myself today about the water filter and it is not working on a RO basis, but it is using a Carbon filter and UV lamp which definitely do not remove any minerals, traces etc from water at all. So because of this I believe it would be a good thing to use.
Read on about e-spring water purifier.

Should I maybe open up a new thread about this filter in another section?

The carbon and the UV lamp may remove small traces of ammonia but other products do a better job of it. I also have about 0.25 ppm of ammonia in my tap water. When I am cycling a new tank with fish in it, happens far too often for me, I simply ignore tank ammonia levels up to around that 0.25 ppm level. If it goes any higher, which it can certainly do, I simply do an enormous water change of 90% or more. That will bring the ammonia back down to the minimum that you can get and remove any nitrite build that you might have. I do not lose any fish while doing a fish-in cycle that way.

You have excellent GH, KH and pH for plants, in my opinion, so your tank potentially may do very well with that (every tank is a bit different) but I do worry some that 4 to 5 watts/gallon of light may cause you algae problems. Generally, once you hit 2 w/g or go beyond that, you will drive photosynthetic activity beyond the carbon demand that a liquid carbon product like Excel can meet. I'm not as expert as the planted folks but I think they'd agree that 4 to 5 w/g is quite high and probably clearly in the CO2 and EI dosing territory, although perhaps with few plants and perhaps only 4 hours of light it might work for a while.

~~waterdrop~~