Small Brackish Stuck at 1ppm ammonia

Hi All,

I've read up a lot on brackish tanks and am kind of unsure as to where to go from where I currently am. I have a five gallon tank I will be getting a red clawed crab or two for, and have set it up in early January to allow for it to cycle. The ammonia was high for a little while when I first started, probably over 5ppm, however, now it is ALWAYS at 1ppm. I had been testing ever 24 hours for a while, but have cut back to every couple of days because it just doesn't seem to want to change. Nitrites are also high (don't have the exact value right now) and Nitrates were alright (I'll do a test tonight to get the current numbers and post later). I am not sure of the exact specific gravity, but I used 1 tbsp of salt per gallon when I set the tank up initially.

I have a mini submersible filter, could it be possible that the medium isn't large enough? I probably have close to 2-2.5 gallons of water in the tank. I have some reptile hides (untreated bark) on the dry land.

This was supposed to be a quick little project because my girlfriend wanted one for out freshwater tank, but I did my research...Any suggestions would be really helpful. Is it still possibly going to cycle, should I start fresh, should I spike the ammonia, etc etc etc?

I initially did a spike with a chunk of shrimp. I had done some 25% water changes early on, and in the past three weeks I have done one 50%, nothing else.

I haven't been putting anything else it to muck with the ammonia yet because it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Should I be keeping it near 5ppm?

Here are my other readings:

Ammonia (from earlier today): 1ppm
pH: 7.2
Alkalinity: < 80
NitrIte: 1.0 mg/L
NitrAte: 20 mg/L

Also, I've done a baseline of mixed saltwater from my tap and it comes up at or very near 0 for ammonia.

Ok, great, thank you! Just making sure I am not doing something wrong as I've never cycled a brackish tank before.

I did the test today and I was somewhere between .25 and .50 ppm ammonia, nitrIte was 0 (? weird?) and nitrAte was 20. Isn't that backwards? Shouldn't ammonia be 0 while there is still a nitrIte reading? Should I try doing a water change at this point?

I'm at work right now so I don't know the exact brand of the salt, but it definite was marine salt, and not aquarium salt. I sadly do not have a way to test SG, as this was supposed to be a quick and easy project... Anyways, I got my 1tbsp per gallon from here: http://badmanstropicalfish.com/brackish/brackish.html under the Brackish River section for an SG of 1.005 (as well as the recommendation here: http://wrongcrowd.com/staticpages/index.php/crab for 5-15ppt). As the tank is very small I don't plan on ever getting any fish for it.

I am using Aquarium Pharmaceutical's ammonia test kit (liquid) and for the rest I use Mardel's 5-in-1 test strips.