nitrite and nitrate levels very high, any advice greatly appreciated!

Hi to all, i have a 46l edge which i started 4 months ago and was going well, i added 2 glowlight tetras after a week and waited a month before deciding to add more, then slowly began to add until i made the schoolboy error of overstocking and overfeeding and soon realised i had created new tank syndrome and lost some fish, I have rehoused the excess fish in a friends tank and have been performing a 25% water change everyday for 4 days and added nutrafin cycle with each change, the ammonia and ph have become normal but the nitites and nitrates remain very high (nitrite 3.3mg/l and nitrate110mg/l) i realise this is mid cycle and still a toxic environment but i am concerned that if i continue to perform daily water changes i will harm the fish further, any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks, Karl

Current Stock - edge 46l

3 harlequins
2 neon tetra
2 glowlight tetra
2 salt & pepper corys
2 male guppies

not planted, yet.

One way to handle this is by a complete water change performed over a few days.

I had the same problem a while back and here is how i solved it.

I prepared water with the normal "water safe" additive and using some hot water brought the temperature close to the 23C I had in the tank.

I stirred up the gravel a bit using a turkey baster to "puff" the substrate and stir up the excess food that was rotting away and causing the nitrite spike

With the gravel stirred up and the excess food floating around I sucked out about 50% of the water and then slowly added the new water.

I did this 3 times in 3 days and which gave me a 100% water change and brought the nitrites to 0.

Fish like good new properly prepared tap water I have found.

A good strategy for feeding properly is to skip one day a week. The fish can fast for 24 hours and then they will be hungry enough to eat the other days.

Stirring up the substrate with a turkey baster is a good way to monitor feeding levels. If your seeing a lot of excess food then your feeeding to much, if you see very little then you should be on track. Also remember when adding new fish they probably won't eat for the first few days so don't increase your food distribution much until they are acclimated.