Question: 64 litre tank cycling

[RJ]

Here are my first cycle test results. What do people think?

[Hayley]

Judging by those results you're getting to the end of the cycle! Once nitrites (NO2) are 0, and nitrates (NO3) are low you're good to go :)

[RJ]

Wait really? Wow! It's not even been cycling for a week yet.

[Hayley]

Oh that is odd. Is this the first time you have tested the water? Is the tank/contents brand new or are you using a used filter? This may be a dumb question, but did you read the results properly? Is it ammonia that was 0, or was it nitrate? Test the water again to make sure. If it hasn't been a week I would imagine you would have ammonia, maybe nitrites, and little/no nitrates.

[RJ]

Yeah, first time testing. The decor is used and was in there previously and the filter media was new last week. I've been using seachem prime and stability. I'll retest later today after work and post the results

[RJ]

Hi @Hayleyy I've retested the water and here are the results

[Hayley]

Wow, I've never had a tank cycle through so quickly :O You could always take a water sample into your local fish store if they do free testing to make sure your kit is working properly.
The prime is probably helping a lot as it eats up ammonia pretty quickly. My local water supply has ammonia (up to 0.5ppm sometimes) so I have started using prime and it is a life saver!
Let the tank keep doing it's thing and test it in a few days/week to see how it's moving along.

[RJ]

I'll test some water straight from the tap and see what the results are.

[RJ]

Hi Hayley sorry for the late reply regarding the tap water test results. Here they are PH= 8, NO2 = 0.25, NO3= 0 and NH3= 0

[RJ]

Here are todays results

[Hayley]

Okay so your water supply has no ammonia or nitrates, but has nitrites. Maybe this has something to do with your tank cycling so fast? I don't know a lot about the nitty-gritty of the nitrogen cycle so don't know if that's possible haha
Did you do a water change right before testing the water again? You should have some nitrates if you didn't. Test the water tomorrow to see if you have any nitrates, and still 0 ammonia and nitrites.

[RJ]

I'm yet to do a water change. I'm planning on doing one today and testing again tomorrow

[RJ]

I did a water change yesterday (Monday) and I'm gonna test the water today (its currently 00:31am)

[Tye]

These are really strange results especially considering they all hit zero on your last test.

While cycling there are a few key moments you should notice. An ammonia spike to start it, a nitrite spike midway through, then the ammonia and nitrite hit zero at the very end with nitrate present.
What's odd is that you never seemed to have had an ammonia spike to begin with. If I'm reading this thread right your local water supply has nitrite though, which could be throwing your results. Did you ever add a source of ammonia to the tank? Either with pure ammonia, fish food, or feeder fish?
What should be happening is that a set of bacteria will eat the ammonia and convert it to nitrites, then another group of bacteria will colonize to eat the nitrite and convert to nitrate. Finally excess nitrates are used by live plants and taken out of the tank once weekly with a 20% water change. The first spike is caused by simply having a lot of ammonia in the tank and nothing to eat it. The second spike is caused by the ammonia eating bacteria doing their job and converting everything but there's still not enough of the nitrite eating bacteria to take care of the waste left by the first bacteria. The two even out to zero after they've fully established themselves in the tank. However since nothing eats the nitrates they build up and need to be removed.
It took me a little over a month to cycle my 20 gallon long tank but some have gone faster or slower.
I'm not fully convinced yours cycled because of the recent results being zero across all values. Definitely a strange set of test results.

[RJ]

The only thing that I have to hand is some fish food. I'll add some of it today and test tomorrow

[Tye]

The idea behind using fish food is that as it decomposes it released ammonia into the water. It takes a fair bit of time before you'll see any results.
I used live feeder fish as they produce waste fairly quickly, I also had a bottle of starter bacteria to help it along.
I would read up on some ways to start a cycle and see which one works the best for your tank size and what you have available to you.

[RJ]

I have been using Seachem Prime and Stability and I have some liquid ammonia arriving soon (Dr Tim's)

[RJ]

So the ammonia has arrived and I have just put some in the tank. When should I test the water again?

[Hayley]

Give it a few days then check the water again. When I was cycling I was testing it every 3-4 days.

[RJ]

How often do I need to add the ammonia? It's doesn't say on the bottle