[Econde]

Alright so, I am still currently cycling my 10 gallon betta tank. Ammonia drops to 0 over night and Nitrite readings are off the charts. So I proceed to change the water out to drop the Nitrite levels back under 1PPM. Several hours later, after the water change, Nitrites read about .25 PPM on the API master kit and is clearly a light purple. I left my test kit still filled out and when I checked this morning, the purple turned to blue? I shook it up and it was still blue. I retested my tank water for Nitrites and now its off the charts again.

Tank is about medium planted, 2x13 watt CFL(daylight), Aquatech 5-15 filter, substrate is miracle grow organic potting soil capped with blasting sand. Been "cycling" for 2 and a half weeks now, with seeded media from my other tank.

So what do you guys think I should do? Continue to do partial water changes to get nitrites level down? Is it safe to assume that the soil is leeching out ammonia hence why my nitrites are off the charts all the time? Has anyone else seen their test kit act this way? I haven't added ammonia in several days. This is my first dirted tank as well.

 

[Fissure]

Most of the test kits are only stable for a short while so the reading should only be taken after the set period that the manufacterer stated and after that ignored. But most likely your substrate are still leaching lots of ammonia. One would think that the process would be faster though since you are using run in media from your other tank. Keep doing WCs and it should eventually go down. Don't think anything is wrong...

 

[Econde]

Most of the test kits are only stable for a short while so the reading should only be taken after the set period that the manufacterer stated and after that ignored. But most likely your substrate are still leaching lots of ammonia. One would think that the process would be faster though since you are using run in media from your other tank. Keep doing WCs and it should eventually go down. Don't think anything is wrong...

Makes sense. I will keep up with the daily partial water changes followed by tests a couple hours later. I can only assume that its still leeching out ammonia since the nitrites are always high even with the partial water changes. Well looks like this will be a waiting game for now. I really want to get a betta soon haha.