Ammonia .6 Nitrates 8

[uwdanno]

Hi everyone -

 

My tank has been cycling for a couple days now.

 

pH is 8.0 and my Nitrites are 0. My live rock was bought cured and I have a Fiji Pink live sand in there. There is nothing in the tank other than rock and sand. The tank is a nuvo 4 gal.

 

My Ammonia is at .6 and my Nitrates are around 8. I am trying to figure out where I am in my cycle. would you expect to see high Ammonia with noticeable Nitrates?! Would you guess that my Ammonia will decline and my Nitrites will spike next?

[seabass]

Everything is looking good. A nitrite spike usually closely follows an ammonia spike, but don't worry if you don't see one. That would just mean that there is enough bacteria which convert nitrite to nitrate (by the presence of nitrate, you can see that this is happening already). Besides, nitrite is relatively harmless at marine pH levels.

 

However, you can continue to monitor nitrite; but I no longer test for it. Once ammonia becomes undetectable for a week straight, I would add a cleanup crew. Then after another week, id add a small fish (slowly stocking the tank in this manner).

 

Once you can clearly see that the ammonia level is dropping, you can start doing water changes.

[uwdanno]

Awesome. Thank you very much Seabass!

 

That helps.