Advice for Noob?

Takes a few months, but I doubt it was bad taste. Probably just checking it out.
 
Nice to see someone doing it right the first time out. I may have missed it, but have you tested your tap water for nitrate? Sometimes mine has a little bit, and others it does not(our tap water is horrible BTW). This could be where your reading is coming from. Your tank looks nice.
 
sumthin fishy said:
Nice to see someone doing it right the first time out. I may have missed it, but have you tested your tap water for nitrate? Sometimes mine has a little bit, and others it does not(our tap water is horrible BTW). This could be where your reading is coming from. Your tank looks nice.
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Thanks. Tap water doesnt have any nitrate, but does test .5 ammonia.
 
So it took 4 months, but my tank finally cycled! I'd been being a good boy and doing weekly 25-30% water changes to keep ammonia down. And that was my problem. Apparently my tap water has way more chlorine than most. I had been putting double the recommended amount of dechlorinator in the new water before putting it in the tank, but was still killing all the bacteria. The last time (a few weeks ago) I had started to get Nitrite and Slight Nitrate readings, then did a small change and all reading back to zero. So for the past 2 weeks I have been not changing water and treating with ammonia neutralizer instead (ammonia levels up to the highest on the scale but fish didn't seem to care...no signs of distress). Today I got zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and somewhere between 40-80 nitrate! I've gotten a few water jugs so I can let my tap water sit for a few days and hopefully that with the water treatment will remove the chlorine completely.

Getting a bristlenose pleco tomorrow
 
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