Insight on a cycle for a noob

[LuciDog]

My first tank textbook cycled so i don't know if this is normal or not, and there isn't a ton of information that I can find on my own.

This tank is 10 days in, so very new.

120 gal
40 sump
120 lbs dry rock
6 lbs live rubble to seed tank
100lbs crushed coral substrate
Day 1 I dosed ammonia to 2ppm. It's been there since, which is fine. Once every 3ish days I add some fish food to keep it up.
Nitrites are off the scale stupid high.
Nitrates are 10ppm

Should I leave all be? Or should I be doing something with the nitrites... They are just SO high.

Not the test kit. It's the same one I use on the other tank and reads fine.

No filters or anything running. Just the sump and circ pumps

 

[pyithar]

you could stop adding the fish food till ammonia and nitrite become zero. after that you could ghost feed again to keep the bacteria population going.

 

[Mark9]

Leave it, one day nitrite will drop like a rock to 0.

 

[Saltliquid]

If you want the nitrites to dive real fast, grab a piece of base rock or what ever from someone else tank or a any bio active media and put it in your tank or where ever you have your main media at the start of the flow to wash from it over your new media to house the cyclers and the bacterium and protists will explode onto the new media and the nitrites will drop suddenly.
At 5 to 6 days of being in your water, anything not alive-other then actual creatures, as is your the new media, like base or live rock or grit or rubble or what ever is ready and has begun to be coated with what is needed for cyclers to exist there.
The old media has stable bacteria and protists on board and will seed your new media, and with high nitrites, quite quickly!
If you keep adding a little food to inspire ammonia on going even for a few weeks after nitrites take a dive, you will achieve a far superior cycle then most!
Do not add delicate life till nitrites are at zero and not showing at all!

 

[Sk8r]

LEt snails and crabs work for 4 weeks before adding quarantined fish. Then you're far less likely to have do an 'agony post' such as 'what's wrong with my tank?'

 

[gone fishin]

Personally I would stop adding fish food or anything else until your numbers zero out. Good luck just my 2 cents.

 

[LuciDog]

FYI - there is nothing live in this tank. No snails. No crabs. Zip. Just some LR rubble from the LFS that I tossed in the sump to seed.

So if I go get a good chunk of LR from an established tank, drop it in front of say my outlet hose, that will help?

I just don't want to sit on a dead tank for 6 months to find out I should have done something else.