Fishless Cycling, Nitrite Levels Insane

[XAli1971]

Hello,
I've started a fishless cycle 10 days ago. The biofilter is happily going through 4 to 5 ppm of ammonia every 24 hours, so so far so good. The levels is topped up daily .
The nitrites though have gone through the roof and stand at about 120 ppm. I know there's supposed to be a spike, but I wasn't expecting this.
Nitrates are at 40 ppm

Not sure what to do now. Leave it be and add ammonia every day or do 2 90% PWCs and see what happens?

Any suggestions and or explanations welcome

 

[justin85]

This is totally normal, keep adding ammonia daily as you have been and when the nitrite drops down to 0.1 your cycle is complete. The nitrites will drop to o.1 over night (going from my last cycle,My cycle took 19 days to finish) then you’re ready to go shopping for fish

I wouldn’t do a water change until the cycle is complete and you’re ready to add fish.

 

[Aqua Tom]

That is completely normal. Your ammonia eating bacteria are now very healthy & producing lots of Nitrite waste. This in turn will be eaten by a new colony of nitrite eating bacteria which take on average twice as long as the ammonia eating type to get established.

Tom

 

[XAli1971]

Didn't think Nitrites would rise that high

ah well

Thank you for the reassurance

 

[the_lock_man]

I'm amazed your test kit even reads that high for nitrite. Sure it's not 12.0ppm?

 

[XAli1971]

I'm amazed your test kit even reads that high for nitrite. Sure it's not 12.0ppm?

Thank you for pointing that out

Hmm... I diluted the sample water .2ml with RO water 4.8 ml and got a reading of .8ppm.

guess I got the math wrong ... was a bit shocked to be honest. should be 40ppm, not 120ppm Need to go ack to school to get my fractions right.
anyway, I guess with that level of dilution there's quite a margin for error