[TK220]

I posted several weeks ago about how my wife destroyed my beneficial bacteria by washing my filter media in tap water and doing a large 80% water change where she throughly vacuumed the gravel (she thought this would be a nice surprise for me while I was out of town).

Anyway, I have been doing daily 10 - 20% water changes (adding prime with every change) and my ammonia levels have dropped from 8.0 down to about 1.0. My question, though, is that I never saw any spike in nitrites. When I first realized my problem my readings were 8.0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 5 nitrate. I now have readings of 1.0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 30 nitrate. Shouldn't my nitrite have spiked first? I've been testing the water at least every two days and never saw any nitrites.

Any insight is appreciated. I should add that I have chloramines in my water, so out of the tap I get ammonia readings of about .75 (of course I always add prime to the water going back in the tank).

 

[under_control]

No. This means there was bacteria left and it is cycling quicker.

 

[Toby_H]

^Yup…

There was a little bit of bacteria in the tank for both conversions… Ammonia to nitrite & nitrite to nitrate…

So as soon as the ammonia was transferred into nitrite… there was bacteria available to turn the nitrite into nitrate… therefore you never detected the nitrites…

Both bacteria increased at very similar levels…

This is why the dip strips that do not test ammonia can often overlook a mini cycle…