Having trouble with starting the nitrogen cycle

[HastroX]

So currently in my 55 gallon salt water tank i have the following
Live Sand
Cured Live Rock (tonga branch 7 lbs, base fiji rock, 14 lbs / (Not sure, bought from LFS)
3 power heads running
heater set at 78-81
cannister filter
water salinity - 0.24 to 0.25
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I placed a piece of shrimp on 8/11/2014 in pieces and also squeezed some brown stuff from my filter of my other tank to get the cycle going.
8/11/2014- Ammonia- 0ppm, Nitrite - 0ppm, Nitrate 0ppm
8/12/2014- Ammonia- 0.25 ppm, Nitrite-0 ppm, Nitrate 0ppm
8/13/2014 - Ammonia - 0.25-0.50 ppm, Nitrite 0.25 ppm, Nitrate 0ppm
8/14/2014- Ammonia- 0.25-0.50 ppm, Nitrite 0 ppm, Nitrate 0ppm

It's frustrating since I thought the Nitrite was already starting but then it dropped back down to 0 ppm and I'm sort of confused as to what's going on =/ I'm not even sure if the ppm levels are adequate, can anyone help?

 

[deejeff0442]

Well you answered your own question.you have live sand.cured rock a d put good bacteria from another tank in.there will be whats called a mini cycle.if you started with lr and thats it the ammonia would spike and the rest would follow.just give it about a week now and once all reading come to zero .you are good to go.

 

[bang guy]

1 - you're expecting things to happen faster than they should

2 - You're tank is handling a dead shrimp. It appears to have a good sized bacterial colony.

My suggestion would be to remove the shrimp, if anything is left, and just ghost feed for a couple of weeks to allow the bacteria colonies to stabilize.

With good live rock I would not purposely allow ammonia to climb above 0.5ppm so you're doing that right in my opinion.