Fishless Cycle Disaster Or Not ?

[pdludbrooke]

I am 2-3 weeks in to my fishless cycle, I was getting very high (off the chart) nitrite readings, I was advised to do a 90% water change which I did, but I forgot to add any dechlorinator to the new water till the last minute. I also had rearranged the scape of the gravel (tesco low dust cat litter) and ended up with such a mess, red dust every where, I decided to leave it till I came home 12 hours later, it was still very cloudy with dust, it looked like planet mars in there, I checked the filter (Fluval U2) it was terrible in there, I had not washed the cat litter enough (AHHHH)
So I decided to start again.
I cleaned all the filter media in a bucket of old tank water and let the filter keep running in another bucket of old tank water.

I emptied the tank and removed all the gravel, I had to clean the inside of the tank as even the glass had red dust on it.

It took me another 2 hours to finally get the cat litter clean (no red dust)

I set the tank back up properly this time (treated water) dosed ammonia to 5PPM as the water test showed no ammonia no nitrite.

I have just tested this morning the readings

Ammonia 2.0 PPM
NitrIte 2.0 PPM

Can I have hope ???
I had to really wash the filter media well, I thought I had killed the bacteria with the untreated water from my first mistake, and I thought they would have definately all gone, as I had to really squeeze and rinse all the filter media for 10 minutes to get rid of the red dust.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

Well if the readings are to be believed it looks like your ammonia eating bacteria are still active but I doubt the nitrite eating bacteria will have survived as they tend to be more sensitive to shocks. You'll probably see your ammonia continuing to drop and the nitrite continuing to climb.

You mustn't have much chlorine in your supply water as twelve hours immersion would normally severely deplete both bacteria.

So not a disaster at all.

 

[OldMan47]

You are doing fine. The ammonia processors are still alive and it is a bit early to see much from the nitrite processors anyway. Just keep up the cycle and things should be fine.