Ammonia Dosing During Nitrite Spike

[dudleyd]

After a lot of pacience and a 95% water change i have finally got my fishless cycle started again.
I think it stalled after 2 weeks due to low ph (started it on November 23rd)the readings were then the same for the next 3 (so i had almost 5 weeks of the exact same readings) weeks Ammonia 4ppm, Nitrite off the scale, Nitrate 20ppm , added a ph up buffer and still nothing.
I performed a 95% water change 4 days ago which took the readings down to Ammonia <o.25ppm, Nitrite 0.25ppm, Nitrate 10ppm, Ph is 7.4 left everything for a day then dosed ammonia back up to just below 4ppm.
3 Days later and Ammonia is 0ppm (tested 3 times because i just couldn't believe it) , Nitrite is off the scale again (assume i'm in my nitrite spike) and Nitrate is 80ppm, ph dropped down to 7, maybe less. Have added a table spoon of bicarb this time instead of ph up and ph is now at 7.8, which i'm much happier with.

Anyhow thats the back story so now the question.

Should i be dosing the Ammonia back up to 4ppm during the nitrite spike or leaving it at 0?

Thanks DD

PS i'm using an API master test kit.

 

[waterdrop]

You never stop feeding the bacteria (via dosing ammonia to the aquarium) during a fishless cycle. Its ok to just dose the same old 4-5ppm all the way through a fishless cycle as it says in our reference rdd1952 article. But a refinement of that that we often discuss here is to lower the dosing temporarily during the nitrite spike phase only. Just dose at about 3ppm rather than 4 or 5ppm. When you get to the end of the nitrite spike (indicated by nitrite(NO2) finally dropping to zero ppm one day) then you raise the dosing back up to 4ppm and then 5ppm. You always want to finish the fishless cycle up as close to 5ppm as you can so that the bacterial colonies will be nice and big.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dudleyd]

Thankyou WD, your a star.

DD