New Aquarium Owner! Cycling Help

[Lady Hobbs]

I would like to mildly correct this from post 2.

There's only ammonia eating bacteria and the NitrIte eating bacteria and they show up in that order. Effectively there are no NitrAte eating BB in FW. TrAtes are removed via water changes although plants also utilize them to some degree.

Thanks for correcting 850. I was just about to until saw you had caught that.

@crackfox.......I don't buy the test kits, either. I buy just as you do, the ammonia, nitrites, nitrates. That's all I need. From buying the kits in the past, I must have 10 bottles of High pH testers around here that I don't need.

[CrackFox]

@crackfox.......I don't buy the test kits, either. I buy just as you do, the ammonia, nitrites, nitrates. That's all I need. From buying the kits in the past, I must have 10 bottles of High pH testers around here that I don't need.

Ah right. Well the strips i've been using measure ph levels and they've been pretty concise so far. I'll carry on using them to measure ph levels. Unfortunately my nitrite kit didn't come today, the post is terrible around Christmas time. Ammonia levels roughly the same, i'd say slightly lighter colour than yesterday's readings but still no nitrite showing up on the test strip. A quick question and sorry if it's a stupid one. Say my tank is hovering around 1ppm/2ppm, will the nitrite still develop even when the ammonia level is very low? Does it have to be over a certain amount or is the tiniest bit enough to bring the onset of nitrites, no matter how long it takes?

I'm just a bit worried that my ammonia levels might be too low to kick start the nitrite growth.

Just to clarify my ammonia levels are about 2ppm (possibly at the low end and scraping the 1ppm mark)

Edit: I'm running a 15Gl tank.
Thanks