Fishless cycling and low nitrite!

Hello everyone!
You can skip the first few paragraphs of my fish history since its too long but I need help with my fishless cycling!!

I have a 10G tank that originally started with 5 mollies. After two months, three of them got sick and died one after another. The reasonthat I can think of other than myself being a totally stupid beginner are:

1. Tank was not cycled.
When I first got them from Petco they told me I could run the new empty tank using dechlorinator and biological booster.

2. Overfeeding and the tank was too small for 5 mollies

3. back to back medication treatments
I was doing water changes everyday or every other day. Still, some of them had issues like a fungus on her head, super skinny, and internal parasites. So I researched and treated them with meds but without any breaks between them..I did not mix any medication together and did frequent 40-50% WC. I used aquarium salt, paraguard, levamisole hcl (3 sessions), pimafix (my fish hated it even when I use 10% of the original dose so i stopped after two days), kanaplex and metroplex 2 sessions. I was so blinded by desperation I underestimated the stress that the fish were going through.. I wanted to save them so bad!

I was so sad that three of my fish passed away due to my ignorance. The two black ones that survived looks healthy and happy.
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Back to the point, while all my fish were alive I have been fishless cycling a new 20gallon tank using dr tim’s ammonia. At first i was using strips and didnt see much ammonia only like 1ppm. but a lot of people here informed me that i need a proper liquid testing kit so I am now using API master kit and API GH and KH kit. The strips were so inaccurate my new tank actually had over 8ppm ammonia and the color changed to blue! (Temp was 82, pH 8-8.2, GH and KH around 200ppm) It was so bad that my java moss was melting and turning yellow.

So I did a 50 percent WC and waited. (This took two weeks) but the ammonia level was not dropping and no signs of nitrite. I waited for another week and poured the entire bottle of FritzZyme 7. Ammonia dropped to 6.0 over two days. Then I started using stability.

After three days of using stability
Ammonia: 4.0
Nitrite: 0.5-1.0
Nitrate: 0
pH: 8.4
GH 214
KH 160
Temperature 84-85

After two more days of using stability
Ammonia: 0.3
Nitrite: 2.0
Nitrate: 5.0

After one more day of stability (so 6 consecutive days)

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 2
Nitrate: 5
pH: 8

So I stopped dosing stability and added 40 drops of Dr.Tims (new version 4drops instead of 1 drop) So far, I dosed 40,30,25 drops over the past three days.

Ammonia does get back to 0 overnight since Im putting lower doses of ammonia.

However, i still have nitrites and even more nitrate..

Should I be dosing ammonia everyday to feed the bacteria? Should I just wait it out? Or should I add stability again?

Help! As a newbie, tank cycling is quite hard..

(Btw, before I started using dr tims, i filled up the tank using tap water treated with prime and biological booster but my filter would not arrive on time and the water sat in the tank for 10days. When the filter arrived I started using fish flakes but did not really work for another 10 days and thats when I started with the ammonia method.)

I would appreciate if anyone could tell me what im doing wrong or right.. Is my cycle going the way its supposed to be? Also i have two java moss, one anubias nana, and three java fern in the tank right now. I want the best environment for my fish. Any comments would be helpful!!

I think the link on the sticky says to add a one quarter size "snack" of ammonia while waiting for the nitrite to get to zero. It's possible the nitrites and nitrates have caused a pH crash which will inhibit the ability of the nitrite bacteria to grow. If that is the case you need to do a very large water change to remove the cycles by-products and than add another dose of Dr Tim's. If your waters kH is high enough, the pH may be fine in which case you just wait for zero nitrite adding a "snack" of Dr Tim's as necessary.

Myraan said:

It's possible the nitrites and nitrates have caused a pH crash which will inhibit the ability of the nitrite bacteria to grow.

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I see. But my pH level is mostly 8-8.2 and i never had the pH go lower than 8
And my KH is around 160.. and GH at 240
So should I just wait until my nitrites fall to 0, and then add the ammonia “snack”?

When nitrites are zero you can add the full dose (unless it only took one day from full dose in which case you are cycled).

When ammonia is zero in one day but nitrite takes longer than three days (if I recall) you can add the snack. This is to stop the baby ammonia bacteria from starving while preventing the build-up of nitrite to excessive levels. The sceptic in me says that the ammonia bacteria will not starve to death they will just go in-active until ammonia is available, but the people who write these guides likely know more than me about this.

What is the nitrite and nitrate level? I got a feeling that a very high ppm of nitrite will block the enzymes that process it. As nitrate is the product of the reaction that also might block them.

Though last time I suggested a water change for someone in this situation I was told that was wrong. It worked in my case, but perhaps only because I have low kH and had a massive pH crash and nitrite of 20 or 30ppm (I had to dilute my sample times 10 to get a purple that wasn't off the scale).

Myraan said:

When ammonia is zero in one day but nitrite takes longer than three days (if I recall) you can add the snack.

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Okay! So how much is the snack? I consider 80 drops as a full dose!

Myraan said:

What is the nitrite and nitrate level? I got a feeling that a very high ppm of nitrite will block the enzymes that process it.

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Nitrite is 2 and nitrate is 5

I think you just add the one snack in total (I just checked this). The snack is 1/3 regular dose, so about 26 drops.

Your numbers will theoretically look something like this, but don't worry if they do not. (Graph is from above link).

Myraan said:

I think you just add the one snack in total (I just checked this). The snack is 1/3 regular dose, so about 26 drops.

Your numbers will theoretically look something like this, but don't worry if they do not.

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Thank you! My nitrite level is at 2 and with my nirate higher, im so confused if im at the beginning part of the graph or at the end..

Thanks for helping! I will have to test pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels every single day/time until i figure something out haha

pH 8 is to high for freshwater fish, find another water source.

I think you are near end if anything. Your nitrate should be much higher (because the molecular weight per nitrogen atom is much higher for NO2 and NO3 than NH3/NH4).

The red and yellow bumps on the graph correspond to where you add a dose of ammonia. The aim of "cycling" is for both of them to reach zero after just one day. If your nitrate is low, it may be being used by algae (or the ammonia is in first place). It's possible you haven't shaken bottles hard enough when doing the nitrate test (I went from a 10ppm nitrate to a 80ppm nitrate when I started shaking API bottles harder).

As general advice...do not use more than one additive at a time, unless it is spcifically advised by a knowledgeable individual (as a treatment for example). You added so many different medications I am frankly not surprised the fish died; they simply cannot manage when they are under such stress, because these medications always cause stress and if the additive is not going to solve the issue it is even worse. That applies to the medications (six different ones), and the fact of water changes is irrelevant, it is the bombarding of the fishes' internal physiology with so many substances. But combining so-called cycling additives is also not good.

The GH and pH are fine for mollies. Follow @Myraan on the cycling, and don't use medications. Aside from the harm to the fish these will impact the water chemistry too.

Myraan said:

I think you are near end if anything. Your nitrate should be much higher (because the molecular weight per nitrogen atom is much higher for NO2 and NO3 than NH3/NH4).

The red and yellow bumps on the graph correspond to where you add a dose of ammonia. The aim of "cycling" is for both of them to reach zero after just one day. If your nitrate is low, it may be being used by algae (or the ammonia is in first place). It's possible you haven't shaken bottles hard enough when doing the nitrate test (I went from a 10ppm nitrate to a 80ppm nitrate when I started shaking API bottles harder).

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Ahhh so glad to hear im almost done!! Thank you so much

Byron said:

As general advice...do not use more than one additive at a time, unless it is spcifically advised by a knowledgeable individual (as a treatment for example). You added so many different medications I am frankly not surprised the fish died; they simply cannot manage when they are under such stress, because these medications always cause stress and if the additive is not going to solve the issue it is even worse. That applies to the medications (six different ones), and the fact of water changes is irrelevant, it is the bombarding of the fishes' internal physiology with so many substances. But combining so-called cycling additives is also not good.

The GH and pH are fine for mollies. Follow @Myraan on the cycling, and don't use medications. Aside from the harm to the fish these will impact the water chemistry too.

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Yeah.. i dont think i ll use medication again!!! The only ones that were effective were paraguard and levamisole hcl..

Mollyforever said:

Ahhh so glad to hear im almost done!! Thank you so much

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Haha - don't get exited I've only gone through the process once so I am no expert.

Myraan said:

Haha - don't get exited I've only gone through the process once so I am no expert.

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If you did it once, you are more experienced and Im glad that you shared your tips! Thanks

Myraan said:

Haha - don't get exited I've only gone through the process once so I am no expert.

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Hey guess what! I added full amount of ammonia yesterday and 24 hrs later I got 0 ammonia 0 nitrites and like 7 nitrate!!!