Cycling speeds - please help - ammonia !

Hi guys

Can anyone advise how long it should take for ammonia levels to start going down ? My tank was started on the 11th April (so 18 days ago now) and for a long time it was very cloudy (I started it off with a bit of fish food and some liquid bacteria bought from a pet store).The cloudiness has finnaly settled, but the ammonia levels are still sky high (8). Nitrate or nitite (I forgot which one it is thast comes first !) is VERY slowly moving up from what I can tell, but it seems to be taking a long time , and I thought as one went up the other should start to come down but the ammonia is remaining sky high ...

There are no food remnants in the tank (little guy is kept and fed in quarantine tank while i cycle), and there is just a thin layer of sand which I disturb every day or two with the turkey baster in case any nasty bacteria starts to breed.

Am I forgetting to do something or doing something wrong ?

It shouldnt be chlorine affecting the results as i am using dechorinated water 9I read it can affect it), but I have stopped doing water changes - read that it's better to NOT do the changes unless you are cycling with axie already inside.

Anyone have any ideas ? Can't help thinking I am doing something wrong ....

Do I need the filter on all the time or can I turn it off at night ?

I want to put my little guy in his house :-(

Most of our tanks took between 4-6 weeks to cycle; apart from our last one which only took 3 weeks - but then I'd used the established filter media from one of other tanks as well as threw axie poo in to start that one off.

Don't know bout others - but we had filter on during the day and switched off at night - only cos it's gets so quiet you can hear it throughout the house. (Even now all our filters get switched off at night when we go to bed)

We didn't touch anything, nor did we bother disturbing the sand while it was cycling - just left it alone (apart from testing the water every few days). - Hubby found it tedious testing every day and getting same reading or gradual climb/decline!

Only thing I can think of is if you were doing a waterchange during its cycling - maybe that had something to do with it.

(Message edited by kapo on April 30, 2006)

Thanks Kapo