Fishless cycle posible stall

[Drakon]

I'm cycling a 29 gal. I dosed the tank to 3 ppm of ammonia. It took about a week but the ammonia is gone but for about a week the tanks been sitting at 5+ ppm nitrite and 20 ppm nitrate. I'm reasonably certain the nitrite isn't much over 5 because I tested 9 parts rodi and 1 part tank water at .5 ppm and 19 parts rodi with 1 part tank water at .25. ph seems to be a bit under 7.8 maybe 7.5-7.6. As this has been going on a week with no change I'm thinking its got a slight stall. Should I do a 50% water change to up my ph and bring nitrites down to about 2.5 ? oh and my tanks been running temp wise about 82

[brandon429]

From your post it seems you are using live rock, not dry rock, so no cycle and no ammonia should be dosed if that's the case. Getting nitrate readings that fast is the indication. If you are using live rock from the store we should not dose raw ammonia to it.

[brandon429]

If you used cured live rock, the action would be 100% water change and put in some corals and begin light reef tank keeping. Post a cell phone pic of the tank we can tell by that alone.

[Drakon]

only thing in the tank is about 40 lb of Carib-sea aragonite and Dr tim's one and only, about enough for a 60-70 gal tank (I know probably to much but I bought the wrong size and had forgot I still had some from my quarantine tank setup)

[brandon429]

So no live rock? Well it sounds like you used at pack arrive alive sand, nitrate indicates the bacteria involved with a completed cycle. Add some cured live rock, do a full water change and add some coral and begin! :)

[Drakon]

it was a non live sand bag, like I said tanks been only running 2 weeks and nitrite is at 5+ ppm for about a solid week. Also this tank is for inverts and fish no corals atm.

[brandon429]

Two weeks to get a nitrate reading means Dr tims is pretty cool! Using dry materials this could be considered a standard cycle tank no prob. Thought there was a live rock component.