Is my tank cycling okay?

I've added details of my aquarium on the sidebar. I used Stability for 7+ days, and Prime to condition. Two pieces of driftwood + dragon stone in the tank. I try to remove dying plant leaves as I see them.
Ammonia / nitrite / nitrate, for the past ~3.5 weeks has gone:
0 / 0 / 0 pH7
1 / 0 / 0 pH6.4
0 / 0.25 / 0 pH6.4
0.25 / 0 / 0 pH6.8
0.25 / 0 / 0 pH6.8
0.25 / 0 / <5? pH 7-7.2 - last night.

Fishless cycle, but lots of snails (some bladder, mostly ramshorn!) that hitchhiked in on plants because I didn't dip. Plants growing pretty well, I remove any dead leaves as I see them. I know things go differently in a planted tank but does this mean I just have to wait for the ammonia to 0 out and then we're ready for fish?

I have been doing weekly 30-50% water changes because of weird dust algae building up on some leaves and when the ammonia reached 1ppm for Gwenyth, one mystery snail that I have because when I went to the store to look at fish and the owner convinced me that it would be okay in a cycling tank?? Ahh, what the mind wants to believe when they're keen to start stocking. He said it would eat the bacterial film on my driftwood even though I know it goes away on its own. I feed her loach pellets and spinach leaves too. And have some cuttlebone in the tank since my pH is not ideal. For the former, looking to fix the water flow in the tank. I have a HOB, and have bought an extender for the inlet pipe in case my tank is too tall. I have a small powerhead too but hopefully don't have to use it because it's another chunky piece of equipment in my tank

 

Are you feeding the bacteria with anything?
Usually a tank is cycled if you raise the ammonia to 2 and then within 24 hours both ammonia and nitrite are back to 0.

 

I don’t have pure ammonia no, can I simulate the effect by leaving fish food in there and seeing if ammonia goes up too high?

 

It will work but it will take longer because you have to wait for the food break down into ammonia.

 

Since you are fishless cycling i will recommend you stop doing so many water changes and you may even want to stop removing leaves that are going bad. They will help add the ammonia needed to cycle this tank as they decompose. I have to think some of the readings you have gotten have come from the bottled bacteria you were adding. Even if you start seeing 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites now you will have only grown enough bacteria to handle the bio-load of the snails you cycled with.

If you don't let your ammonia stay in there to grow and feed the bacteria you aren't going to grow very much of it. In that case as you start adding fish the ammonia level is going to start going up. If you add just one or two at a time it isn't going to go too high and you can keep it down to safer levels with water changes. You will have to wait each time for more bacteria to grow to handle the higher bio-load. This is totally doable but you will basically be doing a fish in cycle with each new addition.

 

Hmm okay. So at the moment, my best bet is to get ammonia and dose to 2ppm until I’m reading values by the next day 0/0/<20 just to be sure? Thanks for the help!

 

Since you are fishless cycling i will recommend you stop doing so many water changes and you may even want to stop removing leaves that are going bad. They will help add the ammonia needed to cycle this tank as they decompose. I have to think some of the readings you have gotten have come from the bottled bacteria you were adding. Even if you start seeing 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites now you will have only grown enough bacteria to handle the bio-load of the snails you cycled with.

If you don't let your ammonia stay in there to grow and feed the bacteria you aren't going to grow very much of it. In that case as you start adding fish the ammonia level is going to start going up. If you add just one or two at a time it isn't going to go too high and you can keep it down to safer levels with water changes. You will have to wait each time for more bacteria to grow to handle the higher bio-load. This is totally doable but you will basically be doing a fish in cycle with each new addition.

I was tossing up just letting the tank do it’s thing and trying to make the mystery snail comfortable... I set the benchmark at 1ppm ammonia but you’re right I’ve probably limited the bioload the tank can process.

 

I was tossing up just letting the tank do it’s thing and trying to make the mystery snail comfortable... I set the benchmark at 1ppm ammonia but you’re right I’ve probably limited the bioload the tank can process.

Is there any way you can make the mystery snail comfortable somewhere else until this tank is cycled? The high ammonia during the cycling process shouldn't bother the uninvited snails but I don't think it would be healthy for your mystery.

 

Update... So since my tank is moderately planted with some fast growing plants in there (my RR floaters are exploding), and I routinely leave pellets / veggies in there for 2-3 days until my mystery bothers to eat it, and the tank had shown a nitrite spike, and my mystery is pooping up a storm on my sand substrate and levels were holding constant... I thought I'd just add a small amount of fish to see what happened!

The tank is now home to some tiny cherry barbs and they've been doing well! I initially added 4, and when water params remained stable for a few days, then I added another 4 to complete the school. I'll continue to monitor water params daily for a week (then go to weekly) and leave it at this stocking for at least another month. Thank you for all the advice!