Restarting Tank

Ah, that's much more accurate 

Since your tap nitrate has gone up, you do have both ammonia and nitrite eaters at work 

Yes, add 3ppm ammonia and test after 24 hours.

Yes. Whenever it is that you reach the point where 3 ppm ammonia is cleared to zero ammonia and zero nitrite in 24 hours, that's when it is cycled. Then just do a water change to get nitrate down to tap level, and buy fish.

If your tank can remove 3 ppm completely in 24 hours, you can theoretically add the whole proposed stock at once, provided you haven't gone over the top with the amount of fish  In practise, there may well be some species that do better when added to a mature tank, a mature tank being one which has grown a whole host of micro-organisms and not just filter bacteria. A tank is reckoned to be mature when it has been running trouble free for 4 to 6 months. Personally I would aim for slightly less than all the fish you intend once the tank is cycled just to give some wiggle room.
Taking it slow is for when you don't know how many bacteria you have grown (eg using fish food instead of ammonia; doing a fish-in cycle) or you are doing a silent cycle with plants and you can't be sure just how much ammonia the plants will take up.


If you can't go fish shopping straight away, add 1 ppm every 3rd day then do the big water change and go shopping. But if it will be at least a couple of weeks, I would still add the 1 ppm then do 3 ppm 2 days before you can go shopping just to make sure it can still be cleared in 24 hours.

Test every day until the day ammonia is below 0.25 and nitrite is below 1.0. Then add another 3 ppm ammonia and continue testing every day. Continue like this till they are both zero 24 hours after adding ammonia.

Ammonia was down to 0.20ppm and nitrite was 0.5ppm so added 3ppm ammonia and see what it is like tomorrow.

One quick question. Once tank is cycled do I think of tank as new or as it had been running for 10 months before my house move is it more a mature tank?

Ok, seem to have had a Nitrite bloom as was 1.56ppm today. Ammonia was 0.33ppm. With Nitrite as it is, should I be considering a water change?

So no new ammonia today. When the nitrite drops below 0.50ppm and I add in the ammonia again, do I add back to 3ppm or just add 3ppm?

In case it helps anyone else, both ammonia and nitrite were down to zero today so added 3ppm ammonia and will check again tomorrow.

In my new second hand tank did the first check today and ammonia has dropped to 2.59ppm from 3ppm, so that is a good sign. Was going to add some sponge from other tank but have decided to leave things as they are and try and fishless cycle the new tank.

You now have a lot of ammonia eaters which can eat almost 3 ppm in 24 hours (2.55 ppm to be precise). They have turned this 2.55 ppm ammonia into 6.8 ppm nitrite.
The reason your nitrite is going up is because you have only enough nitrite eaters to eat 6.8 - 1.5 = 5.3 ppm nitrite in 24 hours.

Nitrite eaters always lag behind ammonia eaters because they can't start multiplying till the ammonia eaters have made some nitrite, and nitrite eaters multiply slower than ammonia eaters.

Back to zero for both Nitrite and Ammonia so topped back up for 3ppm ammonia. Here's hoping the Nitrite fellows get their act together.