Fishless Cycle Question

[ashcroft7]

Evening,

Im sorry to post on here again and im sure your all fed up with fishless cylcling questions but im hoping someone will be willing to clear something up for me!

I started my fishless cycling Tuesday last week. 24 hours after I added the Ammonia for the first time these were the results I had:
pH - 7.4
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 3-4ppm

I then added more Ammonia to bring it back up to 3-4 ppm and went away for the weekend,
When I returned which was yesterday morning, i tested my water and these where my results:

pH - 7.6
Ammonia - 0-0.25ppm
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 7.5 ppm

I then added more Ammonia again and 24 hours later (just a minute ago) these where my results

pH - 7.7
Ammonia 0.75
Nitrite - 0.25
Nitrate - 20ppm

My Nitrate is obviously rising which from what i can gather is a good thing??

Do these results seem OK to you guys? and what should my next few steps be? what results should i be looking for and when will it be done?

I have read the pinned fishless clycling thread but am getting a little confused (sorry!!!)


Really hope someone will be willing to shed somme light

thanks guys i appreciate it!

 

[Aquascaper]

Just keep going as you are, you will see a sharp increase in nitrites at some point (a spike) and if this doesn't reduce after a few days do a large water change. Once you can process 4ppm of ammonia to nitrates in 12hrs (so you have readings of 0ppm ammonia, 0 nitrites and rising nitrates after the initial 4ppm ammonia) then your cycle can be classed as complete. Most people will carry on dosing 4ppm per day and testing for a few days to confirm before adding fish. You can pretty much ignore the nitrates at the moment and just concentrate on the ammonia and nitrites.

 

[ashcroft7]

thats great thank you very much for your help

 

[snazy]

It looks like the cycle is going. Just to be on the safe side, after you add ammonia to raise it to 3-4ppm, test the water half an hour after that to make sure it's indeed 3-4ppm. If your ammonia is less concentrated you may not be bringing the level as high as you wanted it.

Home test kits are not perfect to provide correct results but just as an example, 1ppm ammonia converts to 2.7ppm nitrIte which converts to 3.6 nitrAte.
So if you have dosed 3ppm ammonia the first day and all that got processed, you should have had over 10ppm nitrAte reading after the first 24 hours, providing your tap water contains no nitrAtes to give a higher level and there's no live plants in the tank to lower the level. Plants prefer ammonia anyway, so they'll only feed on nitrAtes if there's no ammonia.