Cycle question

[Papagoomba]

So i started out with a fish in cycle and ended because my S/O decided to buy our daughter 3 gold fish. but after about a week and a half i felt bad and ended up finding them a new home. I am now finishing up and doing fishless. fish have been out for about 4 days now. Just did a water test and my ammonia is up to 4.0 ppm Nitrite between 2.0 and 5.0 ppm and my Nitrate is at about 80 ppm. My question is should i do a water change or just leave it be. Also it does have some plants. Val and some dwarf hairgrass.

[Fish Folk]

On 9/9/2021 at 9:17 PM, Papagoomba said:

So i started out with a fish in cycle and ended because my S/O decided to buy our daughter 3 gold fish. but after about a week and a half i felt bad and ended up finding them a new home. I am now finishing up and doing fishless. fish have been out for about 4 days now. Just did a water test and my ammonia is up to 4.0 ppm Nitrite between 2.0 and 5.0 ppm and my Nitrate is at about 80 ppm. My question is should i do a water change or just leave it be. Also it does have some plants. Val and some dwarf hairgrass.

As long as you have nitrites (middle step) you know that your one bacterial  colony is starting to do its job. There’s no mandatory reason to necessarily change water if there’s no fish in. One thing to check is your tap water: test it to see if there’s any ammonia in it.

[Papagoomba]

ok ill give it a check

 

[RyanU]

I agree with @Fish Folk. If there are no fish there is no need to change the water. 

[lefty o]

the less water changing, the better off you are.

[KentFishFanUK]

To echo and add to what others had said - leave it be and continue to test your tank and also your tap water just so you know what you're dealing with. 

Only thing I would add is if after a week or more if nitrites are only going up it might be worth doing a partial water change - I only say because when I was getting my tank ready once the tank started processing the ammonia into nitrite it took forever to start processing nitrite into nitrate and the nitrites built up to quite high levels and I read somewhere it might be slowing things down so I did a water change (about 50% I think, maybe more) and almost overnight the nitrites started being processed into nitrates. 

Completely anecdotal of course and maybe something else was going on or it was just a coincidence and the water change didn't do anything but it seemed to work for me.