Cycle Has Stalled out Can't figure out why

[Sky042]

ok I was doing a fishless cycle on my tank and for the first few days it was going ok I had already seen nitrites and the cycle appeared to be progressing well.

Fast forward about a week all the sudden my ammonia levels stopped going down and my nitrite was at 2.0 and had not moved one iota. Checked the temperature discovered it had gotten to 90 so I backed it down to 82.

I added a cascade 700 filter to the wet/dry that was already on the tank(the cascade was brand new)

I then re-seeded by taking filter floss from an established filter(my fluval 304) and shaking it in the water of the 54(cleaned it off in the water) and then stuck the floss itself in my wet/dry filter.

checked the next day no reduction of ammonia. However the nitrites were now at 0ppm. checked the ammonia levels for the next 3 days and they hadn't moved at all.

Last night(around 11pm) I took basically all the filter floss out of the fluval(time to change media) and immediately transfered all the floss(3 big handfuls) into the 54 tank shook them out made the water like mud then left one chunk in the skimmer box(to force it into the wet/dry) and left the rest to float around the tank. filters had the water clear in about an hour or two. Fast forward about 18 hours. I checked the ammonia and it's unchanged still sitting around 8ppm and 0ppm of nitrite.

This basically defies everything we know about cycling. With that much of a culture added last night there should have been a drop in ammonia levels or at least a noticeable level of nitrite.

I'm really at my wits end so I'm hoping TFF can provide some suggestions. I can say for sure the ammonia level is not too high since I cycled my 46 at 8ppm. the only other chemical in the tank was jungle labs insta chlor which does NOT lock ammonia but that was a few weeks back when I filled the tank.

Tank specs
54 USG Corner Bow
Temp 82
Amiracle Wet/Dry filter with abotu 3.5 gallons of bio balls
Cascade 700 cannister filter.
There is a nitrate reading of about 80ppm but I believe thats left over from when the cycle started and was moving along.

 

[tstenback]

Hey sky, this is exactly what happened to me. I think that the temp being so high stalls the production of the nitrite creating bacteria. I could not get the thing to move no matter what i tried so i lowereed the temp to 86 and did a 50% water change. Left the tank overnight and then measured in the morning. Things were lower of course so i added some new ammonia and just carried on as if everything was normal. The nitrites gradually rose but did not get as high as i would have thought. but the tank did cycle in a couple of weeks after that it was a 30 gal tank and i was using 5ppm as the target when i finish cycling i added 6 platies and 4 cories with no spike so i guess it all worked out. Dont know if that helped but it was my experience with a cycle that stalled. Good Luck.

 

[Angry_Platy]

My experience is this: I had ammonia maintained at 3ppm....had needed to add more each day to get it back to 3.....then it gradually started becoming less until it got stuck on 3.0ppm....nitrites were fairly high at about 5ppm and nitrates were about 200ppm....after doing some reading I discovered that my nitrates were way too high and were inhibiting the bacteria....I then changed all the water and added ammo again...my cycling was completed 3 days after.....

During the whole process I had my temperature at 90F....due to the hot sumer weather....

 

[Sky042]

My experience is this: I had ammonia maintained at 3ppm....had needed to add more each day to get it back to 3.....then it gradually started becoming less until it got stuck on 3.0ppm....nitrites were fairly high at about 5ppm and nitrates were about 200ppm....after doing some reading I discovered that my nitrates were way too high and were inhibiting the bacteria....I then changed all the water and added ammo again...my cycling was completed 3 days after.....

During the whole process I had my temperature at 90F....due to the hot sumer weather....

Only problem with that is my nitrate reading is only 80ppm. And when I fishless cycled my 46 my nitrates were WAY beyond 200 and the cycle completed just fine.

I've already lowered the temp to the lower 80's I'm going to do a water change tonight and see what happens. I don't have any more media to colonize from so I hope that what I put in there is still good.