Dr Bob
Fish Fanatic
Should be a sticky!!!!
Once your done the fishless cycle, it stated that you will have tones of brown algae and cloudy water....do you need to do something further at this point to clean that or will it clear itself? Can the fish go in when its in this state?
You can drop the ammonia down to about 3 or 4 ppm until the nitrite finally drops back to 0. That will take a while and the nitrite will definitely get higher than the highest reading on your chart. That's because you are technically adding more nitrite every day when you add the ammonia and it is processed. It will probably take about 2 to 3 weeks for the nitrite to drop to 0. The nitrate isn't a worry since you will get rid of it by doing a large water change once the nitrite drops.I've been cycling a rio 125 for about 5 days now. From about day 2 NH4 levels would drop from about 6ppm to 0 in less than 18 hours (going to bed to coming back from work)
I've put this down to using water and stones and one of the filter pads from the tank in my bedroom with 2 ranchu in and them being very mucky pups...
should I keep raising the NH4 to 6pm or now drop it down to 3 or 4..?
the nitrate and nitrite levels are very very high still. 50 - 100 and about 3.0
I'm using nutrafin liquid test.
thanks,
dave.