Too much ammonia for fishless cycle?

[ddm0502]

Today I got my first tank and added some ammonia to start a fishless cycle. Most fishless cycle guides I've read reccomend enough ammonia to bring it to 5ppm. After testing it, my ammonia content looks to be 8ppm, but that is the upper limit of my test kit so it may be higher. Will I be fine leaving it like this, or better off doing a 50% water change to bring it down to a level that is more often reccomended?

[rosita]

I'd let it cycle as is for a day or so, measure, if still high let it ride to see if nitrites start showing up. If not, pwc, wait again for nitrites.

[Roan Art]

Change the water out and get it down to 5ppm max. High ammonia will inhibit the colonization of your nitrite eaters and it will only stall the cycle. If you change out the water you'll only lose a day or so and not weeks.

Nitrite eaters are very sensitive fellas and high ammonia can kill them off or prevent them from establishing.

Roan

[ddm0502]

Thanks for the replies. This morning, ammonia was still off the scale, so I did a water change, now it's down to about 3ppm. The only problem is, I forgot to add prime before adding the new water, so the chlorine from my tap probably killed off any bacteria that has grown so far.

As a plus, the large water change allowed me to clean my gravel better. I used pea gravel rather than aquarium gravel, so it was rather dirty. I thought I'd cleaned it well enough before adding it to the tank, but I was able to siphon up quite a bit of dirt. I've also learned that a large water change of unheated water can make a huge temperature swing that takes quite a long time to recover. Definitely best to learn that before adding fish. Now I guess I just need to be patient and let my microscopic pets grow so it'll be safe to add fish.