First time fish in cycle

This is my first time doing a fish in cycle I've only ever done fishless cycles. I currently have 0ppm ammonia and 0ppm nitrites and 10ppm nitrates. My problem is I never saw a spike of nitrites like I have when doing a fishless cycle. Is the tank cycled or should I wait off putting more fish in the tank?

 

How big is the tank? What fish have you put in there already? How did you set the tank up? Equipment? Plants? PH etc?

 

How long has the tank been running?

What is the reading of your tap water for nitrates?

To answer your question.
Not seeing a spike in nitrites is not a problem. Unless you have nitrates in your tap water you can not have nitrates without the bacteria consuming nitrites.

Unless you are adding plant fertiliser?

 

How big is the tank? What fish have you put in there already? How did you set the tank up? Equipment? Plants? PH etc?

It's a 100 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump. I put two zebra danios in it to cycle it. The tank has nothing special to speed up the cycle.

How long has the tank been running?

What is the reading of your tap water for nitrates?

To answer your question.
Not seeing a spike in nitrites is not a problem. Unless you have nitrates in your tap water you can not have nitrates without the bacteria consuming nitrites.

Unless you are adding plant fertiliser?

The tank has been running for about 2 weeks. I have not tested my tap water for nitrates but I haven't had any before. There are no plants so no fertilizer.

 

Because it start cycling from day 1 with all bacteria that a fish has and waste, it does it all at the same time, and it's small amounts of ammonia and nitrite. I'm not surprised you don't see a spike with 2 danio fish and 100 gallons of water.

My opinion, you can go up to 10 danios, 1 fish per 10 gallons of water and still have plenty of control over it while cycling. When I was doing it I used 1 feeder goldfish per 10 gallons and it was easy to control and not get out of hand. My honest opinion you could go to 3 fish very safely, and in two days go to 5, in another 2 days up to 7, in another two days and a total of 10 fish then 15, then 25 and so on.
You don't want to double your stock at any point, but you could, but the colony you have multiplies roughly every 15 hours, so doubling it in any 24 hour period might cause a spike and later on when it's more fish or bigger fish, it can be a bigger spike and get you into the trouble zone. Cycling fishless or fish in builds a colony for the ammonia load. A couple fish, or 1 small fish per 10 gallons of water trickling ammonia = built for a small load, it can be overwhelmed.


By having 10 nitrates, over your cycling time you've had 3ppm of ammonia created in a trickle. It's not like fishless cycling, in that you start with ammonia, and build those bacteria and then they make nitrite and then that colony builds to break the nitrite, with fish in, the fish brings all of this bacteria with them as a small starter colony and the decay bacteria and all of that that's in and on the fish, this kicks it all off at once from day 1. The whole key to it is not rushing on stocking and monitoring and water changing to keep it safe for the fish.

The downside, you built a bacteria colony for what you have, not for what you want to have. It can only grow to what it has the resources to grow to, so if you rush stocking and overdo it, you'll get a spike either an ammonia spike or both ammonia and nitrites spiking if you push too hard and go too fast with stocking. That's when it could crash and you lose a lot of fish.

Think of it like this. If you fishless cycled for 2ppm ammonia and had 10 fish, time passes fish die and you are down to 1 fish, it sits like that for a year. You can't just run out and stick in 10-20 new fish without it overloading and causing an ammonia spike that the cycle can't handle. It's the same kind of thing.
Slow and steady stocking with monitoring in between additions with breaks to cover for bacterial reproduction wins the race and will get you where you want to be... slower, but safer.

It's been a long time. If you don't mind, could you post a little information on the time it took and your experience? Did you water change at all, or was it so little it wasn't a blip on ammonia or Nitrites?
I Jumpstart off of cycled filters from other tanks, it's Been at least 10 years since I've cycled an aquarium. Curious on how it went for you doing it 1 Danio per 50 gallons of water.

 

Thank you for answering my questions Fisharewet.
With one hundred gallons of water to dilute fish waste I see no reason why you can’t add more fish now.

To answer your question in post #1
Yes it seems likely the tank is cycled, but only for the current stocking. Add more fish slowly and you should have no problems.