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I think you are there. If you are not going to pound the system with a huge bio load, take the plunge. I seeded a 300 gallon system from the filter in a 40 gallon tank and dropped 1000 M. rosenbergii shrimp in the same day. No issues until they got big enogh to kill each other. I ended up with about 500 females and one male. Like highlander, in the end THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (male)!

I am now on day 5 of Nitrites being stuck at 1 ppm. Nitrates also staying at 10 ppm.

AHHHHHHHHH

Have you tried testing tap water to see if you read 0 nitrites? Just wondering if your test kit is accurate. The fishless cycles that I've done the nitrites went up and down very quickly compared to the long drawn out ammonia spike.

Are you still feeding ammonia to the tank and if so what ppm are you adding?

It can only go sa far without living fish in the tank.

Elaborate please.

My tap water is 0 for everything. I have been adding enough ammonia to get to 3ppm and that is processed overnight.

My fish are arriving tomorrow so I just did a 75% water change. I requested a large amount of material from the breeders filter which I will add along with the fish. I'm crossing my fingers that my existing bio filter plus the additional material will be enough. I will feed lightly and monitor levels closely, doing WC's if necessary in the beginning.

I'm pretty confident that all should be good...

You should be in pretty good shape, I don't think your fish will produce 3ppm ammonia in 24hrs so the bacteria that you've built up should be able to handle the lessened bio load with ease, even the bacteria that processes nitrites as that load will also be lessened.

Can't wait to see the new fishies

Well, cancelling fish order for today.

My nitrites are off the charts after doing a 75% wc. Its weird because I figured that both nitrItes and nitrate levels would drop significantly after changing so much water but they actually increased a little bit. Why would that happen?

I am going to feed a much smaller ammonia dose daily now until they come down to absolute 0. Dont want to risk putting an expensive large fish order in.

Patience, patience.

the levels basically for the last week:
ph 8.2
Am 0
Ni 7 or 8? cant really tell, intense purple on the API kit
Na between 5-10
temp 82-84

You are really complicating a simple new tank set up. Clean the tank, add water, add some live plants, add a filter, add fish. Finished. I have set up many tanks this way with no fish losses. I never test for ammonia, nitrite or nitrates.

thanks for your brilliant input, Joe.

CYCLED!

22 days in total. I'll post a link to the details for those of you who are interested.

Thanks for all the advice!

Excellent work!

Congrats for hangin in there

Here are some pics of how the tank turned out...enjoy






Trying to get some better close ups!

Congratulations keep the photos coming!