Newbie 75 gallon

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by gregzz4

Haven't been following your build closely, but just saw what you posted ...

Nitrites 5.0
Nitrates 10.0

Your tank is empty right now, yes? If so you are on the right path. Whatever you have been doing to add ammonia needs to be stopped and you need to see the Nitrites drop.
Hopefully when the NO2 drops the NO3 will also drop.
Ideally, when the NO2 goes away, the NO3 will come down/go away too.

Sorry I haven't been following your build. I gather you're getting ready to add critters?

If you can keep adding your Ammonia product without your NO2 showing up, and without seeing any significant NO3, you can keep it up until you are ready to start adding critters.

Yep tank is empty. Just rocks and sand.

I stopped feeding the tank with mysis shrimp a week ago while waiting for the cycle to complete.

Not in a huge hurry to add critters. Mostly want to move my kenya tree and gsp coral to the 75 gallon so I can start turning the 10 gallon into a sort of quarantine tank. I figure I have a few more weeks to wait before adding a cleanup crew of any sort.

[gregzz4]

What I was getting at is for you to keep adding small amounts of ammonia producing stuff to keep the bacteria levels up enough so when you add critters/fish you don't go through much of a cycle

[Llorgon]

Ah. I misunderstood. I had read that once ammonia is gone and you start to see nitrites and nitrates that you should stop feeding the tank.

It does make sense to continue to feed it a bit every few days to make sure the bacteria that has grown doesn't die.