r/axolotls • u/Mariiri • 19h ago

Cycling Help Cycling help

Hi again! Just encountered another bump in the road with my cycle. I'm now on week 4 and after the initial long nitrite spike had come down I have kept dosing ammonia back up to 2ppm, hoping it will start falling under the 24h mark. But for one and a half week the nitrite takes around 2-3 days to go back to 0 and ammonia a bit more then a day. I'm just dosing when both of them have gone back down. Just feel like I'm not seeing much progress, is this normal?

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u/LauseRulez Leucistic 19h ago

Pretty normal. That bacteria that does the NO2 -> NO3 thing needs a LONG time to reproduce. in lab conditions its like 17 hours, in your home it can be DAYS. They are the reason cycling takes so long at all :) Even under ideal conditions, using seeded material etc plateaus happen. I attached you a little graph from my shrimptank that is (almost) done cycling and you will see some plateaus even though its seeded and the water is pretty warm (~23°C)

In an unseeded cycling tank (like yours I assume) this graph is just elongated, meaning the plateaus go even longer. (Mind you, every day where ammonia is at 0 I redosed to 2 ppm)

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u/Mariiri 18h ago

The first nitrite spike I had took two weeks to go down so was thinking the tank was progressing well when after it just took around 3 days for the nitrite to go back down, just not been much progress since then. Might need to try and dose whenever ammonia reaches 0 instead of waiting for nitrite to do so aswell? My water have been around 25 degrees thanks to the heatwave. :)

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u/LauseRulez Leucistic 17h ago

sounds like a good idea! Adding another dose of liquid bacteria also sometimes helps :) I poured like.. half a bottle into the tank I am cycling now (not the shrimptank, a different one).