Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate... Oh My

[lemond68]

I recently had a fish emergency when my Clown Loach died while my tank was cycling. My pH was highish (7.6) but the nitrates were 80ppm, the nitrites were 10ppm, and the ammonia was 0ppm. Thanks to the forums I was told to do dailiy water changes and to make certain other changes to help the fish thrive.

I did two 25%-30% water changes with dechlorinated tap water over two days. This am the nitrates have gone down to 10-12 ppm. The question is: do I have to keep checking all the parameters if i assume that the oxidizing process is driving the coversion of NH3/NH4 to NO2- to NO3-? The nitrate is not appearing de novo is it? So if the nitrate is down then can I correctly assume that the preceding steps (nitrite and ammonia) in the nitrogen cycle are also down. Should I just check everything everytime?

Thanks

JG

 

[WILDER]

Great, just do a test tomorrow to see if they are still the same, good luck.

 

[SkiFletch]

unfortunately no, you can not. at this point you can give up testing ammonia since the bacterial colonies wich process it are clearly grown to their proper size. However, until you can go 2 days with a nitrIte reading of 0 you cant assume the bacteria that process it are fully grown. remember, bacterial growth is exponential, so its likely that one day you'll see nitrites and the next day they'll be gone. keep testing until you get two consecutive days of 0 nitrite. after that, you should only have to test your water parameters once weekly when you do your water change to make sure that your tank remains fully cycled.

also remember, as far as toxcicity goes, nitrate is not toxic until you start pushing the 100ppm level whereas ammonia and nitrite are toxic even in trace amounts. So, if you're still having high nitrite levels, keep doing daily waterchanges to bring it down to prefferably under 1ppm to keep your fish happy . always remember to test before your water change to see if its necessary