Nitrites Wont Dissappear?

[SkiFletch]

So long story short, been cycling my tank for the past month at least. First with fish (then they perished ) and since about day 10 without. It took me 10 days for my ammonia to drop which from what I understand is pretty average, perhaps even a little early. However since day 9 when nitrites spiked they haven't come down at all and its been 16 days now since the spike started. My question is simply, how long is the longest amount of time you've waited for your nitrite spikes to dissappear? My methods are as follows:

Add pure NH4+ OH- (lab grade) measured to provide exactly 5ppm of ammonia daily
24 hours later, do a 20% water change and add 5ppm of ammonia again (reading is back down to 0 before that)

water stats have been:
pH 7.8
ammonia 0ppm
nitrite 5ppm (or higher, max on scale)
nitrate 40ppm

just have some plants in there (anubias nana) covering 20% or so of the substrate. any help or experiences would be helpful, thanks

 

[yvez9]

the nitrties must be coming down by now, but seeing you have so many, might take a while to come down below 5

say you had 40ppm of nitrites and the bacteria transform 5ppm on ammonia into 5ppm of nitrites every day (so over 20 days, that makes 100ppm of nitrites)

I'd do a large water change (50%) and measure again after that. Keep doing water changes until you get a decent reading
then add another 5ppm ammonia

from there, see if nitrites come down over night

when they do, you're ready to go!

 

[dwarfgourami]

Why do you need to do water changes if you're cycling fishless? I never did. I thought water changes were to make things tolerable if you were cycling with fish.

 

[Pidgecbr600rr]

Arent nitrites the end product of the cycle and the hardest to get rid of and the reason for water changes?

BTW what fish did you start with?, i added 3x Platy from 3 days after the tank started cycleing, and they are still fine and happy 2 1/2 weeks later, infact they are having babies and everything

Did you condition the water and have u checked rocks and things like that, i am new myself and just firing sugestions as i dont seem to have had any problems (touch wood) in starting with a fish cycle

Paul

 

[SkiFletch]

Why do you need to do water changes if you're cycling fishless? I never did. I thought water changes were to make things tolerable if you were cycling with fish.

I was a bit worried that they were getting so high they might be bad for my plants...

 

[yvez9]

the reason you don't do water changes when fishless cycling is that you don't need to

but if you overdo the ammonia dosage or nitrites take to long to disappear, they will just build up nitrites in your tank and take forever to get rid of. water changes will reuce the amount of nitrites and therefore accelerate the cycling in his case.

Otherwise, just wait until they disappear but it could take a while.

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for confirming that Yvez, thats what I figured

 

[rdd1952]

You should be close. If it took 10 days for the ammonia to drop to 0, then it should take about 20 days for nitrite to drop and it will be almost within a day it will drop from off the chart to 0. When you do see a readable level of nitrite, it will be to 0 within 24 hours. I would also stop the water changes. it's not really necessary since there aren't any fish and could actually slow the process.

 

[yvez9]

rdd, the reason i recommend it is the nitrites are off the chart. If he does a 50% water change and thet brings his nitrites to 4ppm, and then transforms that 4ppm into nitrates overnight, i say he's ready to go!