How long have you seen nitrite levels stay high during a cycle?

[boosted_347]

Wow... When going through this cycle I was expecting an initial peak and then gradual decline for nitrite... similar to my ammonia. Take a look at my readings.. How long before these levels start to come down?

Date Ammonia Nitrite Nitrate
9/17/12 .25 N/T N/T
9/19/12 .50 .0 N/T
9/20/12 .50 .0 N/T
9/23/12 .50 .0 N/T
9/26/12 1.0 .0 N/T
10/01/12 1.0 .5 N/T
10/03/12 1.0 5.0 20
10/05/12 .50 5.0 80
10/07/12 .25 5.0 80
10/09/12 .00 5.0 160
10/12/12 .00 5.0 160
10/25/12 .00 5.0 160

[andy2966]

Wow is right. My Nitrite peaked out at 2.0 and went quickly back down. after a week at the most. My Nitrates never went above 20-30. What did you use to cycle the tank? Any Live Rock? Need a lot more info on your tank. Size? Sump? Filtration?

[boosted_347]

Yea. Sorry bout the lack of info. 29 gallon bio cube. No skimmer. 25 pounds dry rock from Marco. 30 pounds sand. Fish less cycle using 1 medium shrimp and then ghost feeding every other day. Ammonia has never gone back up.. But nitrites have me scratching my head.

[Zappo]

I'd stop feeding it and remove any remaining shrimp. With 160 ppm of nitrate, it's safe to say your bacteria population has been established. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the water to be less toxic for your planned livestock. Nitrite will go down soon enough. When it does you're going to have to do a couple of pretty large water changes to lower nitrate concentration by quite a bit.

[boosted_347]

There hasn't been shrimp in there for at least 2 weeks. I'll stop ghost feeding now also. Thanks