I've been cycling my tank for 30 days now, and I started it off using Dr Tims Bottle Bac and 1 dose of Ammonia Chloride. For the first 21 days I was registering total Ammonia in the 2-4ppm range and my Nitrates were pretty low at about 5-10ppm. As per another thread on this forum, I was advised that the free amonnia was most likely at safe levels and it should be OK to add a couple of fish, which I did last week. The fish have survived and appear healthly, so that's good and obviously it was correct advice.
In the last few days, my total ammonia readings have reduced to almost zero (yay!) but my Nitrate readings have jumped up to about 50ppm. To me that seems very high, given I've only ever dosed the ammonia chloride once, and there are no other sources of nitrate that I can think of. I've only just started feeding the fish a couple of days ago, and only one very small half pinch of pellet per day.
So my question is, do you think it's some Nitrites that are causing a false high positive on my Nitrate test? If yes, I suppose i could verify it by getting a nitrite test kit? However, in that case I shouldn't worry and just let the cycle continue and it'll eventually the Nitrites will reduce to zero and my Nitrate test will then show a correct/lower figure. Otherwise, if is a genuine 50ppm of Nitrate, then I guess I'll need to start doing some pretty big (50%+) water changes to dilute it down, before I run into algae or fish health problems etc.
In the last few days, my total ammonia readings have reduced to almost zero (yay!) but my Nitrate readings have jumped up to about 50ppm. To me that seems very high, given I've only ever dosed the ammonia chloride once, and there are no other sources of nitrate that I can think of. I've only just started feeding the fish a couple of days ago, and only one very small half pinch of pellet per day.
So my question is, do you think it's some Nitrites that are causing a false high positive on my Nitrate test? If yes, I suppose i could verify it by getting a nitrite test kit? However, in that case I shouldn't worry and just let the cycle continue and it'll eventually the Nitrites will reduce to zero and my Nitrate test will then show a correct/lower figure. Otherwise, if is a genuine 50ppm of Nitrate, then I guess I'll need to start doing some pretty big (50%+) water changes to dilute it down, before I run into algae or fish health problems etc.