Question: Need tank cycling help!!!

Hi, I am having a lot of trouble cycling my aquarium and need help! So over the last few weeks I have purchase a 65litre aquarium, and I have a tidal 55 filter in it. I added pure ammonia as to directions and have got a reading of between 4-8 ppm and then I added sea hem stability, and added this for 7 days everyday I tested it and it read the same so I did a water change to remove some of the ammonia and still NOTHING no nitrites no nitrates. I could really use some help I am 10 days into the process and am lost.

My go to is always to see if a friend can lend you some filter media to kickstart the cycle. Or add aquatic plants, that has always sped up the cycling process for me.

Mackpritchard said:

Hi, I am having a lot of trouble cycling my aquarium and need help! So over the last few weeks I have purchase a 65litre aquarium, and I have a tidal 55 filter in it. I added pure ammonia as to directions and have got a reading of between 4-8 ppm and then I added sea hem stability, and added this for 7 days everyday I tested it and it read the same so I did a water change to remove some of the ammonia and still NOTHING no nitrites no nitrates. I could really use some help I am 10 days into the process and am lost.

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Toss a couple bunches of Hornworts in there, some fish or your axolotl, and get some bacteria pouches online which should help kickstart your tank cycle. Hornworts are pretty available around the United States and are common in many stores that sell aquatic plants. They suck up ammonia and should help with algae down the road. Bacteria pouches are essentially nitrifying bacteria in pouches (some brands are more effective than others). But that should help you a ton.

HI EVERYONE
Just an update to let everyone know what’s happening do basically I was patient let it happen and also borrowed some filter media so my readings now are at
Ammonia: 4-8PPM
Nitire: 0.25PPM
Nitrate: 10-20PPM
I also added a dose of prime to my aquarium aswell
So I’m glad to see I have some nitrates but now I’m just trying to figure out the best wow to now remove the ammonia to get it to 0 and the nitrite to 0 and would appreciate recommendations to what I should do next
I also added a dose of prime to my aquarium aswell

So you're just starting to see the start of your cycle, as you have ammonia, have nitrites, and have nitrates.
You don't need to do anything right now, (water changes if you have live animals but with ammonia that high I wouldn't put anything in there).
You're basically feeding bacteria right now. So you're seeing the rise of the ammonia eating bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite. Then you have currently a small amount of nitrite bacteria converting to nitrates.
The next part you'll notice is a complete drop of ammonia to 0.0 and a spike of nitrites sometimes past 2.0ppm. This means you have an abundance of the ammonia eating bacteria but less of the nitrite eating ones. Now with more nitrite in the tank there will be an increase of the nitrite eating bacteria which over time will lower the levels to zero as they establish themselves in the tank.
Finally you'll have 0.0ppm ammonia 0.0ppm nitrite and mid to high nitrates. To lower nitrates perform water changes 20% every week or when you notice levels sneak up past 40 and add some live plants to the tank (after quarantining them of course). Plants can help lower nitrates too.

I did an in-fish cycle personally which took about two months because of the amount of water changes I had to do to keep the fish from dying. You can keep adding Prime if you want, but if you don't have any animals in the tank it's not super necessary. I dosed prime and stability for my first few weeks then just prime for the later part of cycle because the nitrites would spike high at the end and I didn't want the fish to suffer needlessly, even though I tossed them at the end (they were just feeder fish).
Bigger water changes will drop the ammonia levels, but since there aren't any fish in the tank producing new ammonia I would be worried about the readings being skewed. Like, is this 0.0 reading because the bacteria is established in the tank, or is it because I removed 80% of the water?
Also note that using Prime can create a false positive for ammonia in some test kits. When you're further in the cycle you might still see ammonia show up in your tests even though it's being eaten by the bacteria. If you think that is happening the site for Prime has some information for better reading your tests. (of course they try to sell you their special test kit as well but that's not necessary).

Do I continue to add in stability?

You can keep adding Stability if you want.
I used my whole 100mL bottle when I was cycling. There seems to be some debate on if bottled bacteria starters actually do anything so I didn't buy a second bottle when I ran out.
Currently I have a standard dechlorinator from API that I use for regular water changes. My leftover half bottle of Prime if there's a sudden spike and I need to detoxify the nitrite or ammonia for the animals in the tank. And a smaller bottle of API Stress Coat+ that I bought when I first got my axolotls. Once again there seems to be some debate on if the stress coat+ product works on them because it's designed for fish slime coats and not axolotls.
From reading around here it seems like the less product you put into your tank after you have the axolotls the better, so I just have a simple dechlorinator that removes chloramines, chlorine and detoxifies heavy metals, (since I use tap water for my aquarium).

Hi guys an update on my tank
So my ammonia had now dropped to 0ppm
And my nitrite has sky rocketed
And my nitrates are still high
I have added prime during the water change that I have done and I was wondering is it now possible to add in my axolotl now as it says that prime detoxifys ammonia notice and nitrate just wondering as I’m getting impatient, thanks for everyone’s help

Nitrite is still toxic to axolotls, especially in high amounts. Anything over .50ppm is dangerous. Honestly anything over 0 is dangerous but over .50ppm is not good to have animals in. However you're nearly at the end. The nitrites will drop after another week or so. I noticed in my tank the nitrite drop was way faster than the ammonia one.
I won't tell you what to do, but if you decide to put animals in the tank, even with prime treatments I would start doing daily water changes of about 50-75%. Heavy water changes will make the cycle slow down, but it's better to be safe than sorry. While Nitrite is less toxic than ammonia it's still not good to expose an axolotl to high levels of the stuff.
In my established tank I had a sudden spike of nitrite of over .50ppm (it was nearing 1.0ppm) and I had to do daily changes to get it down and back under control.

For Nitrate you'll want readings of 40ppm or under. Weekly or twice weekly water changes of 20% will help keep that down.

When you do add animals, I'd still keep up daily water checks to make sure the filter and bacteria are keeping up with the axolotl's waste load. When you steady readings for a few days with no change then you can cut back to weekly readings or readings every three days.

Tye said:

Nitrite is still toxic to axolotls, especially in high amounts. Anything over .50ppm is dangerous. Honestly anything over 0 is dangerous but over .50ppm is not good to have animals in. However you're nearly at the end. The nitrites will drop after another week or so. I noticed in my tank the nitrite drop was way faster than the ammonia one.
I won't tell you what to do, but if you decide to put animals in the tank, even with prime treatments I would start doing daily water changes of about 50-75%. Heavy water changes will make the cycle slow down, but it's better to be safe than sorry. While Nitrite is less toxic than ammonia it's still not good to expose an axolotl to high levels of the stuff.
In my established tank I had a sudden spike of nitrite of over .50ppm (it was nearing 1.0ppm) and I had to do daily changes to get it down and back under control.

For Nitrate you'll want readings of 40ppm or under. Weekly or twice weekly water changes of 20% will help keep that down.

When you do add animals, I'd still keep up daily water checks to make sure the filter and bacteria are keeping up with the axolotl's waste load. When you steady readings for a few days with no change then you can cut back to weekly readings or readings every three days.

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Thankyou so much for your help I will definitely just have to be patient and wait