Can I put my fish in before my cycle is 100% complete???

So my cycle woes continue. I can dose my ammonia up to 4ppm and it drops overnight (not that I normally dose to 4 ppm...that was an accident one time). But my nitrites, while converting to nitrate, are being stubborn. Been about 4 weeks and they won't drop all the way. I have gotten some really solid advice about the best way to finish my cycle...but I was thinking....if my tank can handle that much anmonia, can I stock my tank halfway and do water changes when nitrate gets above 1ppm (and use prime when it is below).

My guess is that this is a bad idea; but for some reason it sounds okay in my head.

 

I would just wait for the tank to finish cycling before adding ay fish. I'm a little doubtful on SeaChem's claim that Prime detoxes nitrites. SeaChem claims that finding this out was a surprise to them, but they believe it to be true because they got a lot of customer feed back saying that because they used Prime during periods of elevated nitrites, they lost less fish. How do they know how many they should have lost? Why can't SeaChem's chemists prove this scientifically?

 

Ahhh interesting! Thanks for that! Certainly not the empirical validation one would hope for!

 

jdhef, my thinking is that it has something to do with the Sodium component of Prime. It's already been shown that the Sodium in Sodium chloride has a protective effect on fish in high-nitrite waters so perhaps it's not that the Prime detoxifies that nitrites but merely protects the fish.

Surely they can test that!

 

Well if it is a protective effect I guess that is better than nothing but I suppose it is better to continue to cultivate my new found, but limited, patience rather than unnecessarily stress the fish.... Bummer.

 

At the end of your post did you mean to say nitrite or nitrate gets above 1PPM> . Alison

 

At the end of your post did you mean to say nitrite or nitrate gets above 1PPM> . Alison

Nitrite

 

Surely they can test that![/QUOTE]

But oddly enough, they haven't