It seems none of my tanks in the last year want to go through a conventional cycle. My fry tank has decided there is no reason to show any nitrites, but lets go straight from ammonia to nitrate. Tonights test results show some ammonia still, 0 nitrites, and almost 5 ppm nitrate. It appears that the fry are producing between 1 and 2 ppm of nitrates per day right now.

Hypothesis 1: The plants (java ferns) are using any excess nitrites. I don't think theis the most likely one due to the rate at which the nitrates are building, and that I should have seen something in the nitrite stage still, if there is enough left over to show as nitrates after the plants have used what they can.

Hypothesis 2: I did have something of a cycle going in the tub before transferring the fry, just not enough media space and gph flow to filter the water enough to remove everything. Now with a regular HOB filter and extra media, the BB that process the nitrites have had a large groth spurt fairly quickly and therefore it appears as the cycle skipped this stage. If this is true then the BB that process the ammonia need to catch up because they are losing the colonization race atm. And I thought the nitrite processing ones were supposed to be more fragile/ harder to colonize.

Any other ideas about what could have happened to the nitrites?

My tank did the same thing. I was glad that I got over the cycling though...

Be glad of that. I had more trouble fighting the nitrites than I did the ammonia. I can remember doing 3 and 4 partial wcs a day to keep the nitrites down!!

I did a fishless cycle on one of my tanks, and I never had nitrites..... my ammonia slowly went down, and my nitrates went slowly up. I figured it was just because my nitrates were eating up my nitrites before they could build up. I wouldn't be too concerned about it, as long as everything else is progressing fine.

Yup, me too! ONe of my tanks totally skipped the nitrites stage and went into nitrates. Go figure. As long as the end results is the same, then it's all good