I have them in my tap water. .5% I guess when I tested for them before, I wasn't shaking the bottle long enough or something. Anyway, I have .5% nitrates in my tap water. Could this hinder the cycling any?

I dont think it would but Im not sure

I don't think so. It wouldn't hinder nitrites anyway....but as far as finishing the cycling, I'd think it would do more help than not.

I have nitrates in my tap too. The tanks cycled fine but unfortunetely Im battling nitrate in my tanks right now. I hope you dont have the same problem!

lucky guys you get nitrate in tap water i get ammonia

Well that could be good for a fishless cycle. That's about it though.

Btw, where our fish used to live (with my gf's parents) they had about 15-20 ppm of nitrate in the tap. We have about 5-10. Not unusual and can't think of any reason it'd get in the way of a cycle.

Ugh, that would be aweful. How do you deal with that?

Yep, the thing is, we are moving at the end of this month, so I will have to check the water at the new place and HOPE AND PRAY there is nothing bad in the water there!

I can't imagine having to deal with ammonia in my tap water, Dan. I am like Glitterfish, wondering how you deal with it???

My tap water fluctuates between having high ammonia and/or high nitrites. So I use RO water and for now, mix some pool water since it hasn't been treated in many months. But soon I'll be back to just RO water again. Of course you have to treat it with minerals though. I was using Kent RO Right at first, but since I was using so much of it, I was spending way too much money on it. Now I'm using drops recommended by my LFS, and they work better and are much cheaper...since it only takes 10 drops per 5 gallons. The RO unit is expensive at first to purchase, but after that, you're all set until you have to replace filter cartridges. Our water bill went up $10 a month after we started using it.

I have a small amount of ammonia in my water too, since my city uses chloramines. I add some extra prime and by the next day after a water chage it gets sucked up into the cycle system. I want to add alot more plants to suck up the nitrates.