Nitrite and nitrate cycle stall

[peaceofreef007]

Hello people. I am brand new to the hobby but been wanting to start for about 10 years now.

I have a reefer 170 and going through the fishless cycling stage but hit a huge road block. My nitrites are over 5ppm and nitrates are over 160 ppm. I stoped dosing ammonia since the tank is converting 2ppm in 24hrs. I have done 2 big water changes 40 and 60% but not one have brought don’t the nitrates and nitrites. I have added another bottle of dr. Tim’s and been dosing microbactor7 each day but nothing has changed and it’s been over a week.

I really need some opinions if I should do a 90% water change, wait it out, or idk. Thank you guys. Learning a lot but really don’t understand why these spikes won’t go down.

 

[Fish Fan]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

#WelcometoR2R

A few thoughts that I hope will help:

Stop adding any more ammonia (I know you said you have stopped, I just want to mention it).

Nitrite is non-toxic, and there's no need to wait for nitrite to drop to zero before adding livestock.

Nitrate can't be confirmed when nitrite is present because nitrite will cause a nitrate test to read high.

If your tank can take 2.0 ppm ammonia and convert it to nearly zero in 24 hours, you're cycled

Good luck!

 

[BeanAnimal]

Also stop dumping in bacteria, or anything else. You are ready for a fish. As mentioned, don’t worry about nitrate or nitrite. As long as ammonia is processing, you are good to go.

 

[peaceofreef007]

Thank you both, that does make sense. I was not very worried about the nitrites just the fact that they would convert to more nitrates. With that, I have been scared to add any fish to continue the buildup of nitrites to nitrates.

I’ll add a fish this week and see how things go. Hopefully that reading goes down so I can start maintaining consistent readings.

Any need for a 50% water change before adding fish? Not sure why I keep seeing that in forums as a standard practice?

 

[Fish Fan]

Any need for a 50% water change before adding fish? Not sure why I keep seeing that in forums as a standard practice?

Because many reefers add too much ammonia during the cycle, which just results in sky-high nitrate in the end, and the big water change was "standard" advice to bring the nitrate down. The only problem with that advice is that any nitrite you have present right now will cause an artificially high result for nitrate, so you really don't know your true nitrate concentration until the nitrite goes to zero. This may be the only reason to check nitrite in a marine tank.

 

[peaceofreef007]

Thank you guys very much for the help. I’ll do a water change to be safe in hopes of any drop of parameters and get my first live stock.

I’m very glad to know that the community is very helpful and responsive.

 

[fishyjoes]

I would suggest a good next step is learn about QT from the sticky thread in the fish disease forum. You are much more likely to lose fish from disease than water quality in my opinion.

Current Quarantine Protocol

2024 Quarantine Procedures Jay Hemdal David Scarborough Protozoans (Cryptocaryon/ich, Amyloodinium/velvet) and Metazoan trematodes/flukes are by far the most common parasites found on newly acquired fish. A carefully managed, proactive quarantine process can effectively eliminate these...

www.reef2reef.com