Cycling help??

Just keep doing water changes like JP suggested. I dont personally know your schedule but a straight water change every day shouldn't add too much strain to your schedule and should save your wallet by not replacing any dead fish
 
JPappy is right that you need to worry about the fish health, not the speed of the cycle. Cutting back on water changes would mean letting the ammonia get too high for your fish so don't do that. You have a nice light load that is making it easier to keep up with the ammonia buildup. The size of the tank does not much affect the speed of the cycle and you have enough fish in there to cycle properly.
 
Besides which, there's no truth in the belief that water changes slow the cycle down. As long as ammonia and nitrite are readable, there is an excess of both and the bacteria will be reproducing full whack.
 
I am on my 8th week and just started to get nitrates doing a fishy cycle also, so alot of water changes the only funny thing is i never had nitrites and i have been testing daily.
Good luck with your tank
 
I am on my 8th week and just started to get nitrates doing a fishy cycle also, so alot of water changes the only funny thing is i never had nitrites and i have been testing daily.
Good luck with your tank

I have also noticed that the test for the nitrates looked to be sort of tinged orange but I thought maybe it was just me. I thought that you had to have nitrites in order to have nitrates. Anyways thanks for the reply. I was beginning to get discouraged thinking that I was doing something to prevent the cycle from happening and was just going to give up wth testing my water.
 
I just tested my water and I have NITRATES!!!

Ammonia .25 ppm
Nitrites 0 ppm
Nitrates 5.0 ppm

I am just wondering why I would have the ammonia reading if there are no nitrites?? Maybe Iam gong through a mini cycle? Could it be that my tank has been cycled but my large frequent water changes were eliminating the nitrates all together??
 
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