Ammonia and cycling

[Dan Bartlett]

I'm in the third week of cycling and getting exciting results, nitrites are 5+ and nitrates are between 100 and 140.  Little confused on ammonia at this stage.  Do you continue to add ammonia or stop and wait for it to go to zero and then the nitrites follow?  Sylvia's book says your waiting for ammonia and nitrites to go to zero before adding in the fish, but then talks about once fish are added you can stop adding ammonia.

[TCLynx]

Dan, see my blog post about

Fishless cycling

That should hopefully help clear things up a bit about the cycling.  You want both your ammonia and nitrite to be 0 when you add your fish.  Since your nitrites are high, I would say let them fall a bit.  Say wait till the nitrites fall to 1 ppm or below then perhaps dose your ammonia again then wait 24 hours and test the ammonia and nitrite to see if they are both low.  Keep doing the dose then check in 24 hours and once you can dose and have both reach 0 in 24 hours, then you are good and fishlessly cycled.  getting to the point where you can dose and have it fall to 0 in a day makes it far easier to know when you can get fish.