Tank Cycling Question

Well I finally got tank setup and got working on getting it cycling. It is a 20L and I've added about 20lbs of dry rock to get it setup. I set up last sunday so it has been up a week, I've chose to cycle with clear household ammonia and added enough to get my level up to about 6-8ppm last sunday. over the course of the last week my ammonia has been dropping pretty regular, today I added about 5-6 drops ammonia back to tank and checked it about 5-6 hours later and have a level about .5-1.0ppm now I also started checking nitrites and they are off the chart now so I think that my tank is going through the cycle now also checked my nitrates and they are high now which I'm going to get a different test kit and recheck it because I've heard API nitrates are kind of iffy. I'm not running a light during the cycle because I am doing the cycle without any liverock or livestock. Any tips if this sound like everything is going on track, I'm pretty sure it is and just curious. Now time to ride out the ammonia and nitrites getting back to 0.

 

Sounds good and like an excellent plan.

You just did not start out with any nitrifying bacteria so there was a slow start to the nitrogen cycle.

 

just completed my first cycle a couple weeks ago as well....mine took about 5 weeks.

be patient. it will help in the long run.

best of luck!

 

well I'm still being patient but I'm waiting for my nitrites to come down some and they still haven't started budging. 20 days into the cycle now and they are still reading very high. I took some advice and done about a 25% wc today to try and lower them a bit because was thinking maybe cycle had got stuck but now I'm just going to ride it on out now thru the end of it. Man it takes a long time to build up the bacteria to convert the nitrite, my ammonia started dropping within a few days after set it up and added ammonia.

 

sit on your hands... its the best thing for you... im cycling a tank right now as well, and trust me i want to add stuff to it too.... i would use this time to find out which way you want to go with this tank... i personally like different relationships in tanks... for example, gobies and pistol shrimps, nems and clowns, or nems and shrimp or crabs... pretty much any kind of symbiotic relationship i can find i like to get... now with a 20 you are a little limited, but with research on this site and questions, you can make that 20 a TOTM one day..

 

yeah I'm being pateint but the only thing that was concerning me was how fast the nitrites went off the chart and stayed. I've been reading looking around trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to add and pretty much have that figured out. I had originally figured 4-6 weeks to get thru it but thought I'd see a break in nitrites by now pushing 2 weeks of the off the chart. I just can't remember any of my old tanks getting that high, which this is the first one I haven't started with live rock either.

 

i would hold off on testing for a while... "USUALLY" you will start to see diatoms, once you those it is a pretty good indication your cycle is over.... i have yet to test my tank, put a piece of shrimp in a week a go and just letting it do it thing... in a couple weeks ill prolly do a test, if everything looks good, ill add a couple hardy fish from my holding tank, your levels are so high because you are adding so much ammonia...

 

Like you said you may have stalled your cycle. Might want to do a water change and bring those nitrites down. There is another thread going on that is having the same problem. I only added 3ppm ammonia to start my cycle, you doubled that with 6ppm which caused your nitrites to go off the chart.

 

I did a 30% change this afternoon I'm going to give it a couple of days and regroup

 

just done a quick round of tests to see if anything changed since doing waterchange my nitrites are still up but not as much and my nitrates jumped from 10-20ppm to over 80ppm since waterchange so it looks as though the waterchange got the cycle moving again I'm pretty sure I got my ammonia a little to high on initial add and the high nitrites caused it to stall out.