high nitrates

I am currently cycling (fishless) a 5 gallon tank with a HOB filter (TopFin) and Fluval BioMedia (BioMAX). That's not super relevant, but it's good to know and share. I have been dosing with Stability and the nitrites just started to spike. What I am not used to is figuring out how concentrated...

I received 12 chili raspbora Fry yesterday - I had ordered 4 but they sent 12, but they are all just barely coming out of Fry age. There had been quite a delay because their other Chili Rasboras were showing signs of fin rot so they weren't going to send those, so I really didn't know when to...

So I have seen the general advice here to always be 'keep nitrates under 20ppm'. Why? What is this number based on? Out test kits show nitrates as just NO3- ions, the studies below use nitrate nitrogen, to convert their numbers to ours multiply by 4.43...

If anyone can read about our situation and give advice we would be so grateful! We are new to the aquarium world, but our problem has stumped even the girl at the fish room who seems to know everything. We have a 20 gallon tank and 2 weeks ago we put in it a Red Spotted Severum (3 or 4 inches...

What a week...crashed computer (I'm on a borrowed one) and now possibly a fishless cycle problem as well. I was going to move my fish immediately into a new 5 foot tank, from their old one, along with all current filter media; but for reasons too complicated to put on here, I am now doing a...