Hey! Finally got that ammonia to spike, then the nitrates, now my nitrates are 150ppm+ and the others are dramatically lower. It has been only a few weeks, but I did buy mature filter media and two kinds of bottled cycle bacteria. Questions:
-First nitrogen cycle complete?
-What happens to the nitrates?
-Do I just remove nitrates with water changes?
-Do I add a senegal bichir now, finally? (45 gallon)
1. Yes, looks like your cycle is done.
2. Your nitrate will just continue to rise.
3. The most effective way of reducing nitrate is by way of water changes. You really don't want to be going past the 20ppm on nitrate in a stocked tank.
4. Do a large water change, using dechlorinator, and check your nitrate level afterwards. You don't really want your nitrate to be any greater than 5 or 10ppm after a water change, lower the better. Then you can add your bichir.
Then, moving forward, check your nitrate daily to establish what your nitrate creep is with your bichir. When you get to around the 20ppm level you need to be doing a further water change....and so it goes on.
One bichir might not give you a lot of nitrate creep as opposed to a heavily stocked tank, your daily nitrate checks will tell you what is what.
Good luck.