Nitrites won't drop

[krazitrain]

Its been over a month and my ammonia levels are at 0. I cut back on the ammonia I'm adding, but the nitrites won't fall at all. I tried a 50% water change to try and dilute it, but it didn't help.

Do the bacteria for ammonia just grow a lot quicker than the ones for nitrites?

The tank is loading up with all this stringy algae..looks horrible

fishless cycling sucks

 

[gadazobe]

Yes - it does take longer for the nitrites to fall, but, don't despair - they WILL fall. Just think of the feast your algae eater will have when you eventually put one in your tank

 

[krazitrain]

thanks.. I'm just getting impatient. I have friends coming over constantly asking when I'm going to get fish.

 

[Juggernaut22988]

Dont water change anymore (until you get fish of course)

Just give it some time and the nitrite should be good

 

[commanderdoom21]

I understand what yer going through. Having to wait for the water to change. I hate that.

 

[Moe]

Are you putting in enough ammonia every day? You should get a reading of 3 - 5 ppm after you add the ammonia every day. That's the only thing I could think of. Also try adding some live plants to the tank to speed up the cycle. Even if you don't want to keep them adding even one plant to help seed the tank will help. When your cycle is done you can get rid of the plant if you don't want it. Plants are usually cheap at LFS. Good luck.

 

[bgraber]

Poor plant
j/k

 

[krazitrain]

the tank is full of plants.

 

[Where the river goes]

I had a similar problem w/one of my tanks. The nitrites wouldn't drop after 3 weeks of being really high, I did a water change and they were still high. I continued to add ammonia and let things run their coarse. The nitrites continued to stay high and refused to drop. Last night when I got home from work I decided to kick up the temp to 86 degrees farenheit. It was at 85 degrees, but I'm tired of waiting and figured even one degree could help Well, it did LOL. This morning the nitrites were at 0! I didn't think it would work that fast...it really caught me by surprise lol. The ammonia is around .5, the end is near FINALLY

The progress on my other tank is increasing rapidly at 86 degrees. I think I found the magic temp to speed up cycling on my tanks