fishless cycle

[karrihug]

i have been doing a fishless cycle in my 56 for about a week, i traded the new filter cartridge from the new filter with one of the used ones (have four) in my 55. have been adding the ammonia every night and 2 days ago i got my nitrite spike and halved the amount i am adding. checked last night and i have nitrite 5 and nitrate 20, but still have ammonia 2-3. should i start adding even less ammonia? thought it was supposed to 0 out when the nitrite spikes. i am so confused

 

[daisycat]

In my (only) experience of a cycle the ammonia remained high until the day before the nitrite dropped off. The nitrite rose and stayed up for about 5 days and then the ammonia dropped by half (from 8+ to 4ish), the next day ammonia was 0.1 and nitrite was 0. I guess it's not always textbook perfect!

I personally would keep going on half quantities of ammonia as you have been doing for a few more days.

 

[tstenback]

sometimes things dont go perfectly with the cycle but the main thing is that yours is progressing quickly which is great if the ammonia has not reached zero by the time the nitrITE does then just do a few water changes to bring it down. But everything seems to begoing great looking at it from here. HTH