Has my tank started cycling?

[Anne L.]

I think my tank's started cycling. I started the fishless cycling last Sunday with 5 ppm ammonia.

Yesterday and today the ammonia has been at 3 ppm, nitrates between 0.3 and 0.8, a little higher today. I did add a little ammonia today to keep things going. pH is 7.4.

Are we on our way with this - any idea how long it should take? Also, how high of a nitrite spike should I be looking before it starts to drop?

Thanks!

[Hydro]

I recently finished fishless cycling and it took me 6 weeks. The timing may vary a bit based on conditions. I did mine without the benefit of a heater or materials from other established tanks. Doing both may speed things up a bit.

For me, it took 16 days before nitrite was detectable and then it climbed quickly over the next 4 days. Nitrate started to appeared around the same time. Then it pretty much stayed that way for another 20 days and then nitrite went to almost zero within a couple of days. After that I kept adding small amounts of ammonia daily for another week just to be sure and both ammonia and nitrite remained at zero each day.

For a while, I thought I was stuck in the cycling process, but comments from posters here certainly reassured me that I was on the right track.

So hang in there. Hope this helps.

Edit: to answer your question, my nitrite spike was off the scale (>33 ppm).