Fishless cycle help required
#1
hi everyone, I'm a new poster and totally new to keeping fish. I've read a lot about fishless cycling and I thought I understood the process but I'm not seeing the results I expected and was looking for some advice.
Firstly sorry if this has already been asked. I tend to prefer to search for answers than post directly but there are so many fishless cycling threads and none I could see seem to replicate the issue I'm seeing.
I started a fishless cycle on 18th January. I added ammonia to bring the level to 3ppm. When I tested the water using the API master test kit the colour indicated more like 4ppm but I guessed I just hadn't subtracted enough from the water volume for the ornaments etc. Anyway I didn't think that would be a big deal.
After a few days I tested again and it still showed 4ppm ammonia. Never mind be patient I told myself. Only its now been 15 days and it's still showing 4ppm. From everything I've read I expected some movement on the ammonia level by now.
We have soft water here and I read that can be an issue. I only had access to kh test strips rather than solution (I've ordered that now and it's on it's way) but, according to the strip, kh was about 20-40ppm so a few days ago I added a pinch of bicarb. Ph of my water is 8.1 out of the tap and it's testing 8.1 from the tank. After the bicarb kh went up to about 80ppm, again according to the strip.
I haven't been testing for nitrites because I didn't expect to see any until the ammonia started to drop but today I thought I'd just check. The test showed 0.25ppm which surprised me. The test colours aren't the most definitive but it's definitely not zero. I tested my tap water and it is zero. I then tested for nitrate and it showed 5ppm which I was even more surprised by cause there doesn't seem to be nearly enough nitrite to have begun to see nitrate. As I said I expected nitrite and nitrate to be zero cause the ammonia was a steady 4ppm without adding any more since the initial dose.
It seems like something is happening or where is the low level nitrite and nitrate coming from but I don't get why the ammonia isn't dropping at all.
I'm wondering whether there was actually more than 4ppm ammonia initially, the difference between 4 and 8+ on the colour chart is pretty subjective, and the high level meant the cycle is taking longer to get going? I'm certain my dose calculation was correct except for the possible minor error in the water volume I mentioned earlier which would not be big enough to be that far out. The only way I could be was if the ammonia I used was higher concentration than I assumed. I used kleen off ammonia which I understood was 9.5%.
Long story I'm sorry but I'm not sure what to do now. Do I just wait longer and see what happens? If so how long do I give it?
I was thinking about doing a pwc to try and drop the ammonia level till its definitely below the 4ppm on the chart and see if that kick starts things but I'm not sure if I'm just being impatient.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.