Quick cycling chemistry lesson please

[BurlyWizard]

Well, update.

I went ahead and did a 50% water change and picked up a skunk cleaner and 2 emerald crabs. I let the water stabilize overnight and checked readings first thing this morning.

Ammonia is 0 ppm
Nitrite is still 1.5 ppm
Nitrate is still 100 ppm

Already started making a new batch of 5 gallons (25%) to swap out and got the Chemi-pure blue in. I also checked my RO/DI water and nitrates read 0 from there, so there must just be that much nitrate in the system.

Changed filter floss and changed out the filter sock as well. Hopefully clean media, Chemi-pure, and 25% more will get those numbers down. Not sure how they're still so high though...

 

[z-reefer]

One thing to note is that your nitrate test kit will read much higher when there is nitrite present in the system

 

[BurlyWizard]

One thing to note is that your nitrate test kit will read much higher when there is nitrite present in the system

Yeah that's a good call-out that I totally forgot. And there are still nitrites. At this point I guess I'll just do another 25% change and hope the nitrites continue to come down.