More water, ammonia up

The Numbers

Date	GH	KH	pH	NO2	NO3	NH3/NH4	Temp °C
8-May	180	40	6.5	0	20	1.0	23°

Observations

• Added about 1.5 gallons of dechlorinated water to the tank. It was too low. I used Top Fin Tap Water Dechlorinator. It's highly concentrated (1 mL/10 gallons), so just added a drop or two to a bucket of water, waited 15 minutes or so, when added it to the tank.
• Added 21 drops of pH UP yesterday
• Water temperature has been steady
• The foam around the perimeter of the water's surface is almost gone.
• More growth realized in the peppers.
• pH reduced from 7.0 to 6.5
• KH significantly dropped
• Ammonia has significantly increased to 1.0 ppm.

Analysis

Today's growth

I'm a little worried about the ammonia spike since I only added dechlorinated water to the tank in addition to the pH UP drops. Hopefully, the spike in ammonia will also spike the bacteria which eats it.

After my readings today, I added 40 drops of pH UP (double the recommendation). There aren't any fish in the tank yet, but the young plants could be affected. It's safe to say that yesterday's addition of the water dropped the pH.

It's also strange that the KH also dropped significantly. This also correlates to the water addition. Of course, the effect could be a culmination of changes made over the previous several days.

I am done doing anything else to the tank for today. I'm still on the goal for a 7.5 pH to help jump-start the cycling. Once jump started, I'll let it reduce to 7.0 for a happy medium between plant and fish.