Just cycled my tank about 2 weeks ago. I haven't added any fish yet. My reading for the past 2 weeks have been 0 ammonia, 0 nitrItes and 160 Nitrates. I did a 60% water change for the 1st time yesterday to bring down NitrAtes. The test for NitraAtes is around 100+ today. I'm about to do another water change, but when I tested for ammonia it was around 2 (just put in liquid ammonia for the bugs to eat) and NitrItes was .5. I don't understand why I'm seeing NitrItes. I didn't clean the gravel or touch the filter; I just changed the water.

I used Prime. Will that give me a false positive when used with the Aqua Pharm test kit? I know almost everyone here uses Prime and AP test kits so I was wondering if you guys ever encountered this problem? Do you know if the AP test kit is Nessler or Salicylate based? The conditioned water tested 0 NitrItes, Ammonia is like a murky yellowish/brownish and NitrAtes are 10.

I was hoping to get my fishies tom or Sunday. I found them in my LFS and they might not be there anymore when I go back. Thanks!

If you added ammonia, then the biobugs will eat ammonia and turn it into nitrite.. then nitrate then you do your water change to get the nitrate out. So it's normal to have high levels if you added ammonia. (correct me if i'm wrong)

Oh! I guess that sounds logical. I usually test my water 24 hours after I feed ammonia so I always get 0 nitrIte & 0 ammonia. I hope it's really because of this. I'd hate to think I killed the bio bugs. Thanks for the input!!

no problem.. im not sure if it really is this tho. good thing you knew about cycling before buying your fish. i had to cycle with fish..

Be sure to do a series of partial water changes to bring down nitrAte before adding the new goldies.

Thanks, have been doing around 70% water change for 4 days now. Does it really take a long time for NitrAtes to go down? Also, why do I still see Ammonia even after 24 hours? Nitrates are 0 though. Ammonia has not been present for 2 1/2 weeks now and just appeared after I did water change using Prime. I know this sounds stupid, but what is a 2 bottle ammonia test I've been reading about? Do they come together(like how we test for NitrAtes with bottle 1 &2) or separately(just getting 2 different brands of Ammonia test kit)? I'm just wondering if Prime, using Aqua Pharm test kits, would give me a false positive in ammonia readings. Thanks again.

P.S. I went ahead and got 1 ryukin. I wanted to get a very cute white oranda with some yellow and black, but unfortunetely it had dropsy.

Yea, with the 1 bottle test, you will get false positive readings when using Prime.

The two bottle ammonia test has two different reagents and works fine with Prime.

How's the new ryunkin doing?