Some strange results?!?!

[Picogoby]

So 12 days ago I started cycling some dry rock I. A tank with 2 lots of starter bacteria added in.

I Ghost fed to creat an ammonia source, as I could not get ammonia at my LFS and needed to get the ball rolling. This was 1/2 cube of mixed frozen a day for the first 8 days. 
ammonia went up to 2-3pmm after 2-3days and nitrite and nitrate VERY slowly climbed.

48hrs ago I had 2 maybe 3ppm ammonia, 0.5ppm nitrite and 8-10ppm nitrate.

readings now are 2ppm ammonia, 0.25ppm nitrite and 100ppm nitrate!

so the tank is doing a great job of converting ammonia to nitrate, hooray! But do you think there may be too much rotting food creating ammonia still?

would you say the tank is cycled?

should I do a water change and siphon to remove detritus/rotting food?

[Tamberav]

It is not cycled if there is ammonia. I would probably just let it finish at this point, do a water change when the cycle is complete to lower your Nitrate. 

[Clown79]

Tank isn't cycled with 2ppm ammonia.

 

Its cycled when ammonia is 0 and can process 1.5- 2 pom ammonia in 24hrs.

 

The nitrates are higher because of using the ghost feeding method. They will probably get higher.

 

At this point, I wouldn't add more food. The ammonia source has been added and ammonia present. Let it process to 0, then feed and see what ammonia is at after that and how long it takes to process.

 

You will probably need to do 90% waterchange when cycle is done