Fishless cycle question!

[SuperReefNoob]

Doing a fishless cycle in my new 40 gallon breeder, ive been following the directions on Dr. Tims fishless cycling recipe and im on day 7 of the instructions and my test results are thus : Ammonia .75ish ppm, Nitrite 3.5ish ppm and Nitrate is like FORTY ppm...did i do something wrong? what should i do? water change or let it ride?

 

[Fish Fan]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

You did nothing wrong

There's lot of opinions and "tweaks" on cycling tanks, I'm not an expert, and others may advise you better, but I say let it ride. Your nitrates are getting high, but you don't have any livestock yet, so I wouldn't do a water change at this point (keep your lights off so you are not fueling algae growth). I did the Dr. Tim's fishless cycle on my last two tanks, I'm fuzzy on the details at the moment, but I'd keep following his suggestions. Here's a great, in-depth talk he gave on the subject, maybe this will help.



Good luck with your new tank!