Nitrates are extremely high after my cycle is done.

[Dom’s Reef]

I am using the API test for now but it is reading 80 to 160 ppm range for nitrates. Ammonia and Nitrite are zero.

Should I do a giant water change. My cycle has been done for a week now just didn’t test nitrate yet. My LFS has some spotcinctus clownfish on hold for me. Would I be able to do a giant water change and get the clowns tomorrow? Or should I take them off hold.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Do nothing yet.. Assuming you did not add ammonia many different times, the result is likely a little nitrite reading as a lot of nitrate.

How did you cycle?

 

[Dom’s Reef]

Do nothing yet.. Assuming you did not add ammonia many different times, the result is likely a little nitrite reading as a lot of nitrate.

How did you cycle?

Sorry for being late a lot happened. I did a fishless cycle. I kept dosing ammonia to 2.0 for a couple weeks when it went to zero. As I did more research I read more and more people saying you don’t need to do that so I stopped, and just let ammonia and nitrites zero out.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I would definitely do some water changes to drop the nitrate to around 10-20 before adding a fish.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

A water change is a fine plan.

Realize that the testy result may be way off unless you boosted ammonia more than 10 times. :)

 

[Fish Fan]

Sorry for being late a lot happened. I did a fishless cycle. I kept dosing ammonia to 2.0 for a couple weeks when it went to zero. As I did more research I read more and more people saying you don’t need to do that so I stopped, and just let ammonia and nitrites zero out.

Your nitrite was up and is now zero, so that looks to me to be a valid result for your nitrate, which isn't a real problem for Clownfish, but you can certainly lower it with a water change, especially if you have a smaller sized tank. If you added the ammonia multiple times, you will indeed end up with high nitrate after the cycle.

Good luck going forward!