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Ok, after my husband messed up my tank and I explained to him how everything was supposed to work. He got a tank of his own. It was set up on May 12th (fish weren't added until the 14th). The ammonia readings have stayed low, I didn't check them the first week, and I don't check it everyday. But could I have missed it? Nitrites and Nitrates have spiked now, I didn't think it would be this far along in the process yet.

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Hi,
Is this fishless or with fish? How big is this tank?

Going by the graph alone, the initial stage of the cycle is
complete as the nitrite and the nitrates have peaked.
However, as long as the nitrites show readings over zero,
the tank is not yet fully cycled. Only when ammonia,
and nitrite readings are zero is the tank cycled.

Depending upon what you did to the new tank, bringing
over some gravel from your tank, or filter media from
your tank, you could have missed the ammonia peak.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

We added three female mollies two days after the tank was set up. One of the mollies had babies, and died. So there are two mollies in there now. I was just wondering if I missed the ammonia spike, there was always a low reading of ammonia but never huge amount. But now my nitrates and nitrites are high. I didn't seed the tank with anything because my own tank was still recovering a little from the incident my husband caused. I know it isn't done cycling, I've just never had a tank go into this stage so fast. My husband is also very impatient and keeps going to look at more fish, and I'm putting off letting him buy any. If there wasn't a big ammonia spike, after the cycling is complete, would it mini cycle when he adds the other fish he wants? It's a 29g, the same as my tank (they're only $100 from walmart, I'm too cheap to branch out, ) We have the two female sailfin mollies, and he wants to add a male, then a trio of swordtails and a trio of platies. I'm thinking that would be a little overload. The babies could be put into my tank as feeders (which is what happened to the first babies, I ended up with 12 and I couldn't see keeping all of them, plus the mollies are good at spotting them and eating them too). If I add them one at a time, how long would I need to wait in between each fish?

Sorry, that reply turned into a whole different kind of question.