Tank Cycling...part 2 Of Cycle

[Ashetto24]

Hi all - I am onto stage 2 of cycling my tank...the ammonia is holding steady between 0 and barely 0.25ppm...and my nitrites are increasing....they hit 1ppm one day. This has been going on for a little over a week. I have been doing daily water changes of 50% to drop the Nitrite levels down close to 0. I know nitrite is toxic to fish but is there a guideline on how high my nitrite should be to warrant a water change?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

 

[waterdrop]

It sounds like you are in a fish-in cycle. The max you want to let the nitrite(NO2) get to is 0.25ppm (just like the ammonia.) This is what can be so difficult about a fish-in cycling situation. If it was unplanned and the bioload (number of fish) was a bit high for the volume of water then you can easily find yourself having to laboriously change water daily. You have to be a bit of a detective to figure out the percentage and frequency of these water changes that you need to do to keep yourself rotating between zero ppm and 0.25ppm. Don't worry about the bacteria, there will be enough ammonia and nitrite even when our test kits read zero ppm for the bacteria to continue to grow.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[tom130691]

im in the same boat if you increase temp bacteria grows quicker
i started my fish cycle a week ago i have had 1ppm 3days before today when i go just over .25 i was doing around 80% changes for them 3 days now around 20-30

this was with 2 fish in 64 litre tank 1 larger filter then another cheap foam one i want to get ready for another tank

 

[Ashetto24]

Great - thanks so much for the advice. 50% water changes every day seem to be doing the trick. I'm building some serious muscles from carrying all of these buckets of water haha

Unfortunately I learned about the fish-in cycling too late...next tank will definitely be a fish-less for sure.