Jesskb

Hi everyone,

My tank has been cycling now for about 6 days, I used a lot of "seeded" material from my old tank, and today the readings were:

Amonia- .25

nitrite- 0.0

nitrate- 5.0

pH- 7.8

This should mean that my cycle is nearly complete right?

jdhef

Well...maybe. It's a bit odd that you are showing readings for ammonia & nitrate, but not nitrite. Is it possible that you have nitrate in your tap water? But then again, I believe I've read on here that some people have cycled using seed meaterial without getting a nitrite spike.

Regardless, until you are reading zero for both ammonia and nitrite, you have a bit more to go. Hang in there!

Lucy

Looks like you're pretty close.
Are there fish in the tank?

Edit: Hi John
Yeah, sometimes, for whatever reason more bacteria that process nitrites survive seeding than bacteria that process ammonia.

Jesskb

no fish, just put a piece of shrimp in there. so I just keep doing the water changes everyday until I get 0.0 for amonia/nitrite? I hope it happens quick I have no patience.

Lucy

If there's no fish, you don't have to do water changes.
Like set it and forget it. lol
Except for testing of course.

jdhef

Lucy is right (no surprize there!), you don't need to do daily water changes if there are no fish in the tank. The purpose of the water changes is to keep the ammonia levels low to protect the fish from ammonia posioning. But keeping the ammonia levels low, also slows down the cycling process.

flyin-lowe

I too have been cycling a tank for a couple weeks and all my nitrites test have been zero. Recently my ammonia went from .50 to 0.