Cycling Questions

I am about done with the third week of my tank being in the cycling process. I added filter media from an established tank about a week ago to hopefully further along the process. Recently I purchased a water testing kit and yesterday and today I tested the water to find these results.

Ammonia - .75ppm
Nitrite - 5ppm
Nitrate - 5ppm

I am thinking that my cycling process is at the stage where the biological bacteria is breaking the ammonia down into nitrite. I'm hoping since there are nitrate readings that the cycling process is almost finished. Would you agree? Earlier in the week I took my water to my LFS and the readings were

Ammonia - 1.5ppm
Nitrite - 2.5ppm
Nitrate - 0ppm

I think I am getting the right idea from the test results that I've gotten but I just wanted to get some opinions to see if I'm on the right track. Thanks!

Looks good so far. Once the ammonia and nitrite are at 0 it's ready. After that it's still good to test the cycle by adding enough ammonia to get it to 4 ppm. Then test the water again 24 hours later and ammonia and nitrites should be 0 with a reading of nitrates.

Thanks so much keiko! Does anyone have any idea how long it should take to finish cycling? Also I've read some things about cycling that say to do water changes but I'm not sure that it would be advantageous. Any opinions?

It shouldn't talk more than two weeks from this point. Water changes are used if you have ammonia or nitrite that gets wayyy too high and also to remove the nitrate that builds up right before you add your creaturesz

You only need to do water changes if you have critters in the tank. If you're doing fishless cycling, I'm pretty sure it's unnecessary.

Today I checked the water and got these reading

Ammonia - .25ppm

Nitrite - 4ppm

Nitrate - 10ppm

It looks like the tank is continuing in the right direction so that's good! Right now my tank could use some additional water due to evaporation so I had some questions. I'm guessing this will change the readings of the water and I was curious if this was a good or bad thing when it comes to cycling? I have a 5gal bucket filled with water sitting in my room that already has water conditioner in it so that I don't kill any beneficial bacteria and I was wondering if this was the correct way to go about doing this.

Thanks all!

You can add water in there. It will affect the readings, but it won't matter. Though you probably should also add some ammonia to make sure there's enough "food" for the bacteria.

So I added water yesterday and today the water seems alittle less clear. I can see through the water still and it's nothing horrible but I noticed a difference and it's not crystal clear as it was the past few days. I've heard that when a tank gets close to being done cycling that it sometimes will cloud alittle bit and once the cloudiness has cleared up that he cycle is finished. Is this true?

I've been checking my water just about every two days and the parameters have remained unchanged. They are
Ammonia - .25ppm
Nitrite - 5ppm
Nitrate - 20ppm
Right now my tank has a bacterial bloom going on and I don't know if that's the issue or what it is. Is this normal? Also I added a dose of ammonia the other day so I believe the ammonia is being taken out of the tank but the nitrite has yet to be removed even slighty. Any insight would be much appreciated!

Give it time. Blooms of bacteria and algae are very common in newly established tanks. They should clear up as the tank's ecosystem gets settled in. In my experience, the nitrite is the slowest part of the cycle, but once it starts up, nitrite readings will drop to 0 overnight.

You are definitely getting there!! Waiting is the hardest part!! LOL I am very impatient when cycling!! Luckily, I have so many tanks that I can pretty much stock a tank with enough used stuff to get things up and running pretty quickly.

The cloudiness should clear up on its own once things get evened out. It's also not uncommon for it to get a little cloudy for a little while after you add new stock to your tank... just depends on how much of a "load" you add to it at one time. The more you add at once, the more likely it is to cloud up for a bit, until the good/bad evens back out.

What do you guys recommend using to dose ammonia? Also does StressZyme contain any ammonia or is additional ammonia needed?

I don't believe StressZyme contains ammonia; I believe that's a product that's intended for use if you're NOT fishless cycling - i.e. put the fish in and they'll produce the ammonia instead.

I haven't found any aquarium forums that endorse the bacteria products. The main issues seem to be a debate over whether the beneficial bacteria are nitrosomonas/nitrobacter or nitrosospira/nitrospira, and whether they have any real "shelf life". The endorsements seem to be from the product manufacturers themselves. The latter pair seem to have a greater potential for shelf life, but digging into the facts seems to indicate that the former are more responsible for the nitrogen cycle in colder freshwater environments.

If you need to add ammonia, you can use the Janitorial Strength Ammonia from Ace Hardware; it doesn't have any surfectants or other additives. Since it's 10% ammonia in water, 1.5 ml of it will increase the ammonia in a 10 gallon tank to 4 ppm. A 1ml syringe comes in handy, especially when you need to, say, increase the ammonia levels by 1ppm.

And, just as an aside, a 10 ml syringe is helpful when filling liquid test kit vials.

Heat can also help speed up the cycle; supposedly 86 Fahrenheit is either the max or the ideal, depending on what you're reading.

I've had bacterial blooms happen right after starting a tank, and the cycle didn't start until after that. YMMV.

So today I tested my water and got the readings as follows:
Ammonia - .25ppm (I could be reading this wrong cause it's been like that for awhile)
Nitrite - 5ppm
Nitrate - 40ppm
So over the last 2 days nitrate has jumped from 20-40ppm. Does this mean that my nitrite should start getting converted to nitrate soon? Could my cycle finally almost be complete? And should I still does some ammonia even though the nitrite may start to go away?

A few questions:

1) What are you using to test your water? Test strips or a liquid-based test kit? Which brand?
2) Did you test your water before adding it to the tank, to know what the parameters are? Some places have ammonia in the water to start, as well as nitrates.
3) Are you treating your water to neutralize chlorine/chloramine, and do you know which you have in your water?
4) What did you do to get an initial dose of ammonia?
5) What sort of filter are you using? Aeration?

The way that the nitrogen cycle works is that ammonia is consumed by nitrosomonas, and converted to nitrite. Nitrite is consumed by nitrobacter, and converted to nitrate.

You want this to happen because both ammonia and nitrites are bad for fish/axolotls even at low levels; nitrates aren't as bad, and are OK at lower levels, so that people either do weekly water changes to keep the nitrate levels in check, or get plants which consume nitrates (think fertilizer).

When a tank is considered cycled, you should be able to increase the concentration of ammonia in the tank to 4ppm, and in 24 hours the nitrosomonas bacteria will have converted all of it to nitrite. Concurrently, nitrobacter bacteria will have converted all of that nitrite to nitrate. So, after 24 hours of increasing the ammonia levels to 4ppm, you should see 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites.

You need to keep ammonia levels up while doing a fishless cycle in order to keep the nitrosomonas fed (i.e. alive).

It might *look* like nitrites aren't "doing anything", but if you're adding ammonia, and the ammonia levels drop over time, and nitrates increase, then there are some nitrobacter consuming the "new" nitrites that are being produced by the nitrosomonas consuming the ammonia. They're just not putting a dent in the current surplus of nitrite yet.

One thing that I didn't mention earlier concerning bacteria-in-a-bottle additives is that they're thought to do weird things to the cycle, like reversing it.

1) API liquid test kit
2) No trace of ammonia or nitrites in my water before adding it to the tank
3) I am using a dechlorinator which also neutralizes any heavy metals in the water (API Stress Coat+)
4) I used the StressZyme+ for that but I realize that doesn't contain much if any ammonia so I am now adding additional ammonia
5) I'm using a filstar xp canister filter along with a homemade sponge filter.

Well, the test kit is good (although I'll admit telling the difference between 20 and 40 nitrates is difficult). And the nitrite/nitrates aren't from the tap. I'm wondering if your cycle isn't stalled; you had added some established filter media to the tank, but didn't "feed" it any ammonia (assuming at this point that your reference to adding ammonia a while back was adding more stresszyme). Adding more ammonia may kick it back in gear. Another thing to consider is whether your canister filter uses a spray bar in order to aerate the water.

Yes my references back awhile ago were in reference to StressZyme which is my mistake since I was not knowledgable about that! But I have dosed up to 4ppm of ammonia as of yesterday so I'm gonna wait another day and test to sweet what happened. I have a sponge filter which uses an airstone for aeration along with a spray bar from the canister filter but I have something to dampen the flow of the spray bar because it was creating too much current in my tank. I also usually have a fan blowing on the top of my tank to keep the temperature down which also causes some water disturbance.
Also my bacteria bloom has started to go away so my tank has started to clear up which makes me feel a bit better!

So after waiting 2 days my ammonia readings have dropped to .25ppm. Yesterday they were 2ppm. It seems like my tank has never gotten below .25ppm when it comes to ammonia. Should this be concerning?
Also my nitrite readings have been at 5ppm for about 2 weeks now with no change to that reading at all.
Nitrate has been increasing in the past several days but over night the readings went from 60ppm to 20ppm. I am not sure if that test somehow got screwed up or what. I do have live plants in the tank but I don't know if that would cause that sort of decrease in nitrate.
Today I added more ammonia to keep that bacteria fed. I'm just wondering if the nitrite readings will ever go down because right now I've kinda lost hope

I'm not an expert at all but it sounds like you're on the right track.