Years ago I ran a Hagen 48g long, for about 4-5 years. I've kept fresh water tropical fish of many kinds, exotic plecos and peacock eels. I was in college and transitioning into the work place again. It was a stressful time, but I found that watching fish was an extreme stress reliever for me. I'm fortunate that my work in IT is considered essential services during this pandemic where I live. In fact, the workload has exploded, and with it, much more stress. So I'm back into fish keeping.
I setup a 32g Fluval Mega Flex about four weeks ago. The tank has been slowly cycling, with fish & using biological enhancers. I've increased the fish population as conditions allowed. I have the added bonus of an already cycled small 5g hospital tank / shrimp tank I got from my daughter. That extra little tank is useful to be able to remove a few fish from my new tank, should I see unwanted ammonia or bacterial spikes. I had been doing 10% water changes, 3-4 per week to keep the PH to around 7. In the first 3 weeks, ammonia and nitrites had stayed very low, and nitrates were hitting over 10. So cycling was happening. My longer term goal is develop an 'Orinoco river' type tank with a pleco and rams from that region. So I've kept the temp around 79-81 which seems to the happy overlap between pleco's likes and rams likes.
Just recently I added a couple of rams, and the other day a tiny L128 Pleco. To be safer, I countered the adds, by removing a few fish previously introduced (into the hospital tank). Though I don't always do it, I used a drip acclimation process for the rams & pleco. Ammonia and nitrite levels came up slightly. Ammonia (test result, non-ammonia) is sitting around .03, toxic ammonia is <.01 (0.0 on the chart) and nitrites around .6. I started doing 10% daily water changes and that has kept my PH to between 6.5 -7.0. When I added the pleco it seemed to be spending a lot of time near the top of the tank. Since oxygen-CO2 exchange happens on the surface of the water, I guessed that it was looking for increased oxygenation. My water level was right at the level of the tanks water return nozzles, so I removed a few liters of water, causing the water return to pour out above the water surface, increasing the surface disruption, resulting in greater oxygenation. That seemed to have done the trick as the pleco then began to hang out near the bottom of the tank.
I have ammonia & nitrite removing filter pads on standby, but as far as I recall, .03 ammonia (<.01 toxic ammonia) and .6 nitrite are pretty low and easily managed by most fish. By the time I do my daily 10% water change, nitrates seem to be around 20. After the change down to 15+. But I'm testing nearly daily at this point in case there's a spike in ammonia, nitrites, PH or nitrates. I don't want the ammonia and nitrite to be so low that cycling is disrupted either. Doing my best to err on the side of underfeeding rather than overfeeding.
Any advise for me at this point? If someone has experience with cycling and ammonia & nitrite removing filters, would you add them immediately or hold off and watch the levels closely, only adding them when there's more defined spikes?
I setup a 32g Fluval Mega Flex about four weeks ago. The tank has been slowly cycling, with fish & using biological enhancers. I've increased the fish population as conditions allowed. I have the added bonus of an already cycled small 5g hospital tank / shrimp tank I got from my daughter. That extra little tank is useful to be able to remove a few fish from my new tank, should I see unwanted ammonia or bacterial spikes. I had been doing 10% water changes, 3-4 per week to keep the PH to around 7. In the first 3 weeks, ammonia and nitrites had stayed very low, and nitrates were hitting over 10. So cycling was happening. My longer term goal is develop an 'Orinoco river' type tank with a pleco and rams from that region. So I've kept the temp around 79-81 which seems to the happy overlap between pleco's likes and rams likes.
Just recently I added a couple of rams, and the other day a tiny L128 Pleco. To be safer, I countered the adds, by removing a few fish previously introduced (into the hospital tank). Though I don't always do it, I used a drip acclimation process for the rams & pleco. Ammonia and nitrite levels came up slightly. Ammonia (test result, non-ammonia) is sitting around .03, toxic ammonia is <.01 (0.0 on the chart) and nitrites around .6. I started doing 10% daily water changes and that has kept my PH to between 6.5 -7.0. When I added the pleco it seemed to be spending a lot of time near the top of the tank. Since oxygen-CO2 exchange happens on the surface of the water, I guessed that it was looking for increased oxygenation. My water level was right at the level of the tanks water return nozzles, so I removed a few liters of water, causing the water return to pour out above the water surface, increasing the surface disruption, resulting in greater oxygenation. That seemed to have done the trick as the pleco then began to hang out near the bottom of the tank.
I have ammonia & nitrite removing filter pads on standby, but as far as I recall, .03 ammonia (<.01 toxic ammonia) and .6 nitrite are pretty low and easily managed by most fish. By the time I do my daily 10% water change, nitrates seem to be around 20. After the change down to 15+. But I'm testing nearly daily at this point in case there's a spike in ammonia, nitrites, PH or nitrates. I don't want the ammonia and nitrite to be so low that cycling is disrupted either. Doing my best to err on the side of underfeeding rather than overfeeding.
Any advise for me at this point? If someone has experience with cycling and ammonia & nitrite removing filters, would you add them immediately or hold off and watch the levels closely, only adding them when there's more defined spikes?
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