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My Nitrates have dissapeared! HELP!

Ok so I'm not sure if I have ruined my 8 week fishless cycle or not but I am going to be positive and put this out there and see what I get back.

I have been cycling my system for about 8 weeks now and just two days ago finally got my system to go from 2ppm ammonnia to around 0 in 24 hours and had a reading of over 80 nitrates.

I had been having trouble with PH so I finally used some hydrated lime and got the PH up to 7.0 for a few days so decided it was time for fish :)

Yesterday there was allot of rain so i let the first bit of rain run off (to get rid of debris and other contaminants) and then ran the downspout into one of my FT's to help top it off. I left and it ended up POURING for a long time and may have overflowed a little but nothing drastic.

Today I put in 100 goldfish between the two tanks (Each tank is 275 gallons and I have a total of 250 sq ft of GB's) and when I just did a water test there were NO nitrates, nitrites or ammonia readings at all. All of them registered 0.

I am scared that maybe the rain water may have gotten rid of all of the nitrates or if adding the fish has done something but I am really nervous that my 8 weeks of work has to be restarted and with the fall approaching this would be a bit devastating because I would not be able to do my fall crop.

Could anyone share what they think might have happened PLEASE!!!!!!

Thanks so much

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair on August 29, 2012 at 9:54pm

Don't sweat it, you don't need 80 ppm to grow crops. Your goldfish will be generating plenty of nutrients in no time but go easy on the feeding at first to avoid a nitrite spike. Also don't expect gang-buster results from the get go. It really takes a system 6 months to a year to be generating a rich nutrient profile. My plants are so much healthier 9 months after cycling then they were in the beginning.