Something weird is happenning with my cycle

[dan15daman]

hi yet again everyone,
There's been some weird things going on with cycling my poor eastern newt's water. Usually, at least when I cycled all of my fish tanks, there's a gradual spike in ammonia for the first week to week and a half, and then the same thing with nitrite, and then nitrate gets in there within a few weeks of that. Well for some reason with cycling my eastern newt's tank things have gotten out of hand. The ammonia is reading .5ppm, which would be expected after three days, but I also have more than 1ppm with nitrite, and .5ppm of nitrate! What on earth is going on here? First off, I know better than to feed animals during a cycle, so unless my little guy has been hiding all of that ammonia in himself then I don't know where it all is coming from. I treat my water with Aqua Safe. I also put rocks in from one of my fish tanks, but only after I realized the nitrite and nitrate levels were already existent. At first I panicked and stupidly moved the newt into a breeding net in my 55g fish tank, but I realized that the temp of 78 in there is too high, so I moved him back which I know must have really stressed him out. I've also been doing about 5-10% water changes every 3 hours for the past few days or so. The newt doesn't go into the water, which should be expected with how poor its quality is. The temp is currently around 69 or 70. If any body can give me some helpful advice it'd be greatly appreciated! I'm sorry I'm a newb with so many issues and questions,
Dan

 

[Lasher]

Remove the newt, cycle properly then re introduce him.
It sounds like your bacteria arent established, you need to give enough time and favourable conditions for them to replicate before increasing/varying the bio-load.

Are you using any kind of filtration at all?

 

[dan15daman]

Remove the newt, cycle properly then re introduce him.
It sounds like your bacteria arent established, you need to give enough time and favourable conditions for them to replicate before increasing/varying the bio-load.

Are you using any kind of filtration at all?

I have a hang on back filter for now while its cycling. Once that's done I'll I'll take it out and replace it with a corner filter. Water flow isn't too bad because the filter has to sihpon the water up about 5 inches so it isn't as efficient. HOB filters have better biological filtration if you ask me. My only concern is that nitrates have already formed after 3 days in large amounts which hasn't happenned in all the time I've cycled tanks.

 

[Lasher]

Its normal for one to spike after the other, you just need to allow time for Nitrospira to build up.

 

[dan15daman]

well he's acting fine now. Through yesterday he just sat on the top of his rock and wouldn't put a toe in the water, but today he's been all over the place. He'll be fine. Just a random question... are newts nocturnal or diurnal?

 

[Kaysie]

Nocturnal, or crepuscular. Although sometimes in captivity they're active during the day.