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Waiting, mostly patiently -- fishless cycle


Oreganoodle
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I started a fishless cycle a few weeks ago. I used one of the bottled bacteria, and saw ammonia ->nitrite but not nitrite->nitrate.  Over the past couple of weeks I have bought a different brand bottle and two more of the same brand bottle.  I've been daily adding up to 1 ppm of ammonia and watching it disappear; and finally the other day saw nitrites down to 0. Wahoo.  So I brought the tank up to 4 ppm of ammonia to test if it was cycled -- but that was a week ago and the tank still hasn't handled it. It is down to somewhere between .5 and 1 ppm.  Nitrites are at 0.  Nitrates are between 80 and 160.

Should I still just wait, or is the ammonia not decreasing rapidly at this point a sign that I've gone backwards?

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You likely didn't have enough to handle the 4ppm. Just wait it out.  

From personal experience, the longest wait is for nitrites to nitrates.  But that's without bottled bacteria. 

I don't know how effective those are. I've used it myself on my first tank with no problems.  But it was just one fish in a 10 gallon. It wasn't much of a test. 

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