Question: How to get my ammonia to convert to nitrites?

[SammyTheLotus]

I'm having a lot of trouble with my cycle in my 30 gallon tank!
I did a 60% water change yesterday and then dosed my ammonia up to 2.0, but I'm wondering how long it will be before I see my ammonia converting into nitrites? The reason I did the water change in the first place was because my ammonia was sitting at 4.0 and I thought I may have been essentially overpowering the bacteria. So I did a large water change to lower the ammonia because I don't want to overwhelm the bacteria that are trying to grow..
I posted a thread a few days ago about how my cycle has crashed but I feel like I'm getting nowhere with it! There has to be a step I'm missing or something I'm not doing right..
Any feedback would be super appreciated!

 

[CatSpit]

Here's some info on cycling your tank. 60% changes are pretty big, you might want to stick with doing 15-20% changes and then re-test to see where you're at.

If you use pure ammonia, be sure to measure the amount you are adding to the aquarium and start with a very small amount of drops to begin with. Once it has been in the water for a while, you need to use the ammonia test to see the level of ammonia in the water. You want the test to show a reading of 2 to 3 ppm. If the test shows the ammonia level is over 5 ppm then you need to remove some of the aquarium water and add more clean “conditioned” water until you bring the ammonia level down to 2 to 3 ppm. Wait a few days and test for both ammonia and nitrite. Once your nitrite test starts showing that there is nitrite in the water, add half the amount of ammonia you used on the first day to the water. Keep testing for ammonia and nitrite every few days. After a couple of weeks you should see test results showing very little ammonia and higher levels of nitrite. Once this happens you can add a little ammonia (about a quarter of what you put in on the first day), but again you must keep the nitrite level below 5 ppm. If it goes higher it will kill off the good bacteria that you need for the cycling process to continue. Continue to add this small amount of ammonia every few days and test the water – you should start to see the level of nitrite go down quickly. Once it does, you can test to see if the tank is cycled by putting the amount of ammonia that you used the first day into the water and by the next day it should show test readings of 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and a small amount of nitrate.

Hope this helps! Good luck with your cycle.