Cycle still on track?

Update on this tank: Cycling a 25L | 474726 | Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle

For about 5 days now, my nitrites have been around 10-20 mg/L and my nitrates are 200-400 mg/L. When I do a 90% water change and add 1 mg/L of ammonia, my nitrates will be around 10 mg/L and nitrates around 200 mg/L 24 hours later. I can’t seem to keep them much lower than that.

Nitrites have been showing up for over 2 weeks now, but still aren’t all converting to nitrate and seem to just build up without anything happening to it.
My ammonia still goes down from 1 mg/L to 0 in 24 hours.

Is my cycle still on track? I’m running 4x diluted tests at this point and even then can’t keep the values readable on the charts unless I do a 90% water change every other day. I’m not sure, but to me it seems like others aren’t doing half as many waterchanges as I have to do.
Is my cycle still going, stalled, is there something wrong with it? What’s going on? I’ve been stuck at this point for 3 weeks now, does it usually take this long? I want to be patient but I’m very worried that something is going wrong.

 

It is strange that nitrites and nitrates are going that high within 24 hours with the tank just processing 1ppm ammonia each day. I would think the water changes would have lowered them significantly. The amount of ammonia processed determines the amount of nitrites and then nitrates are produced. 1ppm ammonia processed in 24 hours should not spike them so high.

I have to wonder if there might be something fishy about your testing solutions and they are giving you false readings.

 

It is strange that nitrites and nitrates are going that high within 24 hours with the tank just processing 1ppm ammonia each day. I would think the water changes would have lowered them significantly. The amount of ammonia processed determines the amount of nitrites and then nitrates are produced. 1ppm ammonia processed in 24 hours should not spike them so high.

I have to wonder if there might be something fishy about your testing solutions and they are giving you false readings.

I’m not sure about my tests. The nitrite one gave me 0 in readings for quite some time, until they gradually started to rise (at the beginning of the cycle, around week 2).
I used the nitrate test on my tap water, which showed 0 mg/L, so both tests are ‘capable’ of showing a 0 result. Is there any other way to figure out if my tests are faulty?

I thought that such high spikes were weird too, as I couldn’t figure out where the spikes were coming from. I do add 1 mg/L of ammonia after each water change though, when the test showed 0 before the WC.

I don’t have any friends in the hobby, so I can’t test my water with anything but the tests I own myself. I can’t easily get some new dropping tests, because they’re 11-18 euros each to get, with ammonia and nitrate being the most expensive, but if that’s the only way...
The only other option I have are test strips, which showed me 0 for both nitrites and nitrates for a while, but those strips also test off the charts high values now.

 

You say you add ammonia when you do water changes. Is that the only time you add it?

I wish I knew if there was a way to know for sure whether or not your tests are giving you a false reading. Getting readings this high with so little ammonia being processed just isn't making any kind of sense to me. Since both test strips and liquid tests are basically telling you the same thing it stands to reason that they are telling you the truth.

I may have asked this before but just in case I haven't. Are you adding anything other than ammonia and possibly a water conditioner when you do a water change? If you are using a water conditioner which one are you using?

You said you are running a HOB filter on this tank. What kind of media are you running in it? You also said the only thing in this tank is substrate and one plant. What kind of substrate is in there? There are some substrates that leach ammonia for a while. If a lot of ammonia is coming from yours it would partially explain the high levels of nitrites and nitrates. Although your nitrites should have dropped by now.

If you are still doing water changes every other day or so I would stop doing so since it doesn't seem to be helping.

I am going to suggest something that might be difficult for you to do but just might work. First change out as much of the water in this tank as you can. And then I suggest you get a bottle of Tetra Safe Start Plus. Once you pour it in this tank add enough ammonia to get it up to 1ppm daily. It may even be better if you could add .5ppm ammonia in the morning and .5ppm again 12 hours later.

Continue adding ammonia once or twice daily for 2 weeks. Don't run any of the test during this 2 weeks. The tests will tempt you to do something but you don't want to disrupt the process. At the end of 2 weeks run the tests to see where you are. You have to be diligent about adding ammonia every day. This is going to mimic a fish being in there producing ammonia.

 

You say you add ammonia when you do water changes. Is that the only time you add it?

I wish I knew if there was a way to know for sure whether or not your tests are giving you a false reading. Getting readings this high with so little ammonia being processed just isn't making any kind of sense to me. Since both test strips and liquid tests are basically telling you the same thing it stands to reason that they are telling you the truth.

I may have asked this before but just in case I haven't. Are you adding anything other than ammonia and possibly a water conditioner when you do a water change? If you are using a water conditioner which one are you using?

You said you are running a HOB filter on this tank. What kind of media are you running in it? You also said the only thing in this tank is substrate and one plant. What kind of substrate is in there? There are some substrates that leach ammonia for a while. If a lot of ammonia is coming from yours it would partially explain the high levels of nitrites and nitrates. Although your nitrites should have dropped by now.

If you are still doing water changes every other day or so I would stop doing so since it doesn't seem to be helping.

I am going to suggest something that might be difficult for you to do but just might work. First change out as much of the water in this tank as you can. And then I suggest you get a bottle of Tetra Safe Start Plus. Once you pour it in this tank add enough ammonia to get it up to 1ppm daily. It may even be better if you could add .5ppm ammonia in the morning and .5ppm again 12 hours later.

Continue adding ammonia once or twice daily for 2 weeks. Don't run any of the test during this 2 weeks. The tests will tempt you to do something but you don't want to disrupt the process. At the end of 2 weeks run the tests to see where you are. You have to be diligent about adding ammonia every day. This is going to mimic a fish being in there producing ammonia.

I add 1 mg/L ammonia daily. Apart from that I use tetra aqua safe to condition my water and the substrate is a fine black gravel. Now that I’ve looked into it, I’m not sure if it’s a HOB filter. I plug it in and the entire thing has to be submerged, but it’s suctioned to the back of the aquarium. It has filter cartridges which seem to be sponges with activated carbon in the middle. It’s the superfish aqua flow 50, I added a photo of the package.

I tried to hold off on the waterchanges, but honestly I’m still doing it every 2-3 days because I wanted to keep the test values in the readable range with a 4x diluted test.

the only other thing I can think of that I added is the tetra safestart bacteria, though I don’t think that I’m dosing it adequately (less than recommended) because I already had my first colony of BB set.

At this point I’m wondering if I should just let it be and continue dosing 1 mg/L of ammonia daily and not test for like a week to keep myself from getting too fixated on the test results and possibly messing the process up by doing water changes.

 

The filter you are using isn't one I would choose but it might be just fine for this size tank.

If you have TSS, doing what I suggested could very well finish up this cycle. Adding the bacteria in a bottle isn't going to damage the bacteria you already have in this tank. It is simply adding more of what you are already growing. Once the bottle is opened I'm not sure it has much of a shelf life so you may as well go ahead and add all of it to the tank. You aren't going to overdose on bacteria.