Holy.... !

[aquapants]

We had been trying to get our cycle established on this new tank for a while, with no luck. At one point, we had a small amount of nitrites, but ammonia levels were not dropping and there were never any nitrates detected.
A couple weeks ago I did a major water change, took the fish out, vacuumed the gravel, and of coarse, once I put the fish back, the NO2 levels were 0...few days later, still 0, and so on.
I got a little desperate and bought a bottle of Cycle from my lfs. Everyone said it was bunk, but I figured it couldnt hurt anything, except make me $8 poorer. I tested my water levels for a couple days. The NH stayed pretty low but I didnt see any NO2. I added some more cycle, about 3-4 times the recomended amt total. and...
Today (about 5 days after adding the Cycle) I checked NH and NO2. No ammonia! and no Nitrites???...
so I checked the Nitrates and, miracle of miracles, they are somewhere between 10-15ppm!

 

[OldMan47]

Glad to hear you have you chemistry under control. Now if you watch and the nitrates start slowly rising you will have some evidence that the tank is cycled. After that you can start thinking about how you would like to stock it.

 

[jm1212]

are you adding ammoina?

try adding enough ammoina to make 3 ppm, and then see how long it takes to reach 0.

 

[lucy42083]

Great news!! I also went through a cycle where I never saw ANY nitrites at all, but I never added Cycle or anything like that.

My ammonia wouldn't go down and nitrites were 0 forever, and I was testing every day, and then slowly ammonia started going down. However, nitrites never went up, at all. Finally, after ammonia had been at 0 for a week and still seeing no nitrites at all, I tested nitrates. Lo and behold, they were around 20 ppm! Did a water change to get them down around 10, 2 days later they were around 30. People swore up and down I couldn't be cycled without ever seeing nitrites, but I was.

Has anyone else ever had this experience of completing a cycle without ever seeing nitrites? I'm just curious if this could have something to do with water chemistry, or what.

 

[aquapants]

There were already fish in the tank (yeah, we made that mistake), see my sig. they make their own ammonia. Little poop machines.

 

[aquapants]

I think I just missed the nitrite spike, actually. I mean this happened very rapidly, in about 4 days. On the 2nd day I noted a decrease in ammonia with no nitrites, but it was 10pm and I hadnt checked the levels since 10am the morning prior. Judging by the speed at which this all occurred, the spike could have happened sometime within that 36 hours.