need help Cycling tank

[nel3]

yesterday i did a 50wc on my 5gal as the parameters were too high nirtites 2ppm and 15ppm nitrates. i restested the water right after teh wc then i retested the them again this morning and i got .25 nitrite and 10ppm nitrate. my question at this point is what do i do at this point? im compelled to do a WC to lower it even more but i dont know if the cycle would crash. i currently have the 2 betta in there with live and fake plants. id rather not stress them out too much due to water quality.

its only been 3 weeks since ive been constantly running the filter, during WC it gets shut off for a few seconds until i place it and some water in a tupperware container to keep running. it never stays off for more than a minute.

[Akeath]

Go ahead and do another water change. Doing partial water changes will not cause the cycle to crash - none of the beneficial bacteria live in the water, they are surface adherers and are mostly in the filter/substrate. As long as both of those remain wet you will be fine. I did daily water change during my fish-in cycle to keep levels good, and the daily water changes didn't hurt or lengthen the cycling process at all. As long as you keep the water changes to 50% or less and make sure you add the water slowly so it doesn't create lots of current as you are doing it the fish shouldn't be stressed by it much at all.

You probably don't need the tupperware for the filter, unless you are taking hours on the water change. It probably won't hurt, though, as long as you are making sure the water in the tupperware is dechlorinated - untreated tap water will kill the bacteria.

[nel3]

Originally Posted by Akeath

Go ahead and do another water change. Doing partial water changes will not cause the cycle to crash - none of the beneficial bacteria live in the water, they are surface adherers and are mostly in the filter/substrate. As long as both of those remain wet you will be fine. I did daily water change during my fish-in cycle to keep levels good, and the daily water changes didn't hurt or lengthen the cycling process at all. As long as you keep the water changes to 50% or less and make sure you add the water slowly so it doesn't create lots of current as you are doing it the fish shouldn't be stressed by it much at all.

You probably don't need the tupperware for the filter, unless you are taking hours on the water change. It probably won't hurt, though, as long as you are making sure the water in the tupperware is dechlorinated - untreated tap water will kill the bacteria.

thank you nery much Akeath, i'll do atleast 1gal wc. i just dumped the current water into the tupperware and let the filter run in that.