Cycling difficulties: Plenty of nitrate, ammonia still rising

[hoodle]

Hi! Three weeks ago set up a small 1 gallon jar, and I added saltwater, some algae and pipette of baby brine shrimp. I've been using Seachem stability daily for the past week, and the jar has plenty of porous dry rock, as well as biological filtration media. There are a LOT of dead brine shrimp on the bottom of the jar, and the ammonia was rising pretty quickly. Once the ammonia was at 4ppm, the nitrite began to rise, followed by nitrate. However, for some reason, ammonia and nitrites are still rising. Ammonia is past 8ppm, and nitrate is at about 40 ppm. The colours on the nitrite test for the larger amounts all look the same to me, but I believe it's above 1 ppm. I don't have enough data to make a graph, but I don't think this is normal. Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance

[hoodle]

Should I do a water change? I tried fishing out the detritus (brine shrimp) that I used as an ammonia source, but it hasn't made a difference.

(By the way, the brine shrimp died when I temporarily added an aiptasia, not due to poisoning)

[seabass]

Why would you add aiptasia?

 

Yes, definitely change out all of the water:

• Take out the rock(s) and rinse in a bucket of saltwater (note the water level for refilling).
• Take a turkey baster, and blow out the organics from the rock(s).
• While the rock is still in the bucket, stir up the sand, and pour the old water out of the jar.
• If necessary, add more saltwater, stir, and pour out the dirty water.
• Fill the jar with clean saltwater (back to the level you noted earlier).
• Now return the rock(s) back to the jar.

[hoodle]

Thanks. The aiptasia was just there because I wanted to see if it could survive all the ammonia

[specore]

Personally I would just change enough to get ammonia down to 2ppm or so and see how the cycle is doing.  Just because you have nitrate doesn't mean the ammonia is getting processed quickly.  The 2ppm should be able to cycle out in 24 hrs, and if it does you can then do another water change and be ready to go.