Should i Have High nitrates during the cycle?

[bfazio1030]

I just started my cycle last night. Should i have high nitrates in my tank during the cycling process? Its about 50ppm at the moment. Amonia at about 2ppm

 

[redfishbluefish]

Immediate nitrate comes from leaching from your rock. Sounds like you'll need time to cure that rock.

 

[Dburr1014]

Probably test error.
How did you start the cycle?

Edit, what they said. ^^

 

[bfazio1030]

Probably test error.
How did you start the cycle?

Edit, what they said. ^^

Fishless cycle using fritz turbo start and fritz fish fuel.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I think you do not have 50 ppm nitrate, but maybe 0.5 ppm nitrite.

A little nitrite will be read falsely by the nitrate kit as a much larger amount of nitrate. It's an known issue with most nitrate tests based on how they work.

 

[brandon429]

rocks don't store up nitrate to emit it later redfish. if you were thinking they had dried up organics on the rock/not dry rock/ I can see how rehydration and rot could produce some from protein degradation over time, but not in 24 hours. any bacteria he added from a bottle have started to work, machinery in action... we'd need to know his rock source it seems.

 

[brandon429]

how to convert this into a testless cycle, where it doesn't matter what any parameter has to say on a cheap test kit:

1. don't dose any more ammonia.
2. add in a pinch of ground up fish food into this stew
3. wait until 4/20/23 and change a good portion of your water, you're cycled. that's long enough for bacteria to adhere to all rocks submerged. you didn't state any bottle bac used; that's long enough to handle your cycle even if you used none. it's likely you did use some; most do, that's well over long enough having used any of the common starter bac. this trick ensures you don't get a false stall based on cheap test kits.