nitrate and nitrite

Question
please tell me what to do, My fish tank is 20 gallon i have tetras,swordtails,mollies,neons,rainbow fish. for the last 3 days i changed 25% of water and every other day i vaccumed the gravel, i gues i lost all my bacteria, today i got some live plants and big gravel that has bacteria. the guy said it should help me with my nitrate and ammonia, but when i checked the water the nitrate and nitrite is high again and amonia is zero., how long does it takes to go down? Then in my filter i have a 50 Aqua clear this is how its setup, first the sponge then the carbon, then the white little round stuff on top of that i have another stack call ammonia remover sould i remove that so then the bacteria will be able to help the water to get rid of nitrate.please help me.
samina

Answer
Hi Samina,
It sounds like your tank isn't fully cycled. To help cycle your tank you must do daily water changes of about 30% and testing of the water. When your nirtite reading is zero along with ammonia it is then fully cycled. It takes 4-6 weeks for your tank to fully cycle. This means the filter would have matured. Ammonia remover does nothing except remove all your benficial bacteria which means you will be back to square one.

Hope this helps
Chloe.