Cecil:
Come-on, you can spare a few small bg to see how the tank is doing! Throw some in there already!!!!!! Whatcha waiting for!
The nitrites are at least 5 mg/l. Sure death for any fish.
Yep, sure death.
Your Nitrites are going to take a bit longer. Cooler temps and light make it take longer to fully cycle.
Can you rig up a cover for the RBC? Cheap black plastic or something to keep the light out.
Also, elevated air temperature will help with an RBC. If you can cheaply direct a heater duct, that will help.
One thing I tried was infra-red over a flat black shield. Raised the temp up pretty good without drying anything out. That would be too expensive to run full time, but as an experiment it went well.
The beauty with your RBC or fixed film reactor is once it is working properly, it is very reliable.
I did however have an instance of Nitrate poisoning with a new mini rbc. Something to keep an eye on.
