First Fish Tank

[dohntaut]

2/7/10
nitrite 1.0ppm
nitrate 20ppm
ammonia .5ppm
ph 7.6
75%change


seems pretty hard to tell whats going on right now with all this fluctuating, but i guess time will tell, haha

 

[OldMan47]

Your readings are telling me that your water changes are too small or not often enough Dohntaut. Try doubling the frequency and see if that gets your water parameters back on track.

 

[Assaye]

With nitrites and ammonia as high as yours are you'll probably need to be doing 75% morning and evening. You need to keep them at zero. I know 1ppm doesn't seem like much but it is still very dangerous to the fish.

Good lukc and keep us updated =)

 

[dohntaut]

2/8/10
nitrite 1.0ppm
ammonia 0ppm
nitrate 20 ppm ph 7.6

sadly one of my x ray tetras passed away, i figure it was due to the water quality however i did notice that the angel fish was nipping at him a lot today, also the xrays dont get to eat as much due to them swimming in the middle of the tank.

hopefully with one less fish it will make it easier to cycle( less bioload, i am assuming)

i am unable to do 2 water changes a day due to my schedule, hopefully my 1 a day changes will suffice and i do not lose anymore fish as my tank is cycled.

 

[waterdrop]

Don't blame you at all here, it can be incredibly time consuming to perform a large water change and all the associated setup and cleanup. Don't forget that another option is to see if you can get your LFS to temporarily hold a few of your larger (or all) of your fish until you can steady your tank - its a long shot but sometimes people can luck into that kind of help.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dohntaut]

2/09/10
ammonia .25 ppm
nitrite .50ppm
nitrate 20ppm
ph 7.6

looks like a 50% change will do but ill do more like 75% to be safe

 

[OldMan47]

Good choice on the 75% change there. It is better to start at lower concentrations that keep things under control while you are between changes.

 

[dohntaut]

2/10/10
ammonia 0 ppm
nitrite .50ppm
nitrate 20ppm
ph 7.6

i did a 75 % change today.

im not too sure but it kinda looks like some of my plants are dieing, the leaves look a a bit brown however i do see some sprouting smaller stems from the bottom though. Im refering to the plants on the right on the fist page, i will try to take a picture later.

2/11/10
ammonia 0 ppm
nitrite .25ppm
nitrate 20ppm
ph 7.6
looks pretty low so i guess i can get away with just a 50% change

2/12/10
wasnt able to test or change water
2/13/10
ammonia 0 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
nitrate 20 ppm
ph 7.6

Looks like the waters getting better, so i have to continue testing the water until i see 0 ammonia and nitrite and under 40ppm of nitrate for a week or so?

2/14/10
ammonia 0 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
nitrate 20 ppm
ph 7.6

 

[dohntaut]

so here is a picture of the plants that seem to be dieing, the leaves look to be turning yellow and brownish, i notice that my angel tries to eat it all the time. They are also not as tall as they used to be, kinda like slouching/limp now

 

[waterdrop]

Hi dohntaut,

Looks like the waters getting better, so i have to continue testing the water until i see 0 ammonia and nitrite and under 40ppm of nitrate for a week or so?

Yes, as your Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira colonies build up in the filter, your double-zero days will get more stable. First, when you can go two days maintaining these double-zeros without changing water you will know you are there, or almost there. Simply see whether it can then accomplish this for a week (no water changing but testing out to zero ammonia and zero nitrite each day) and you can consider your fish-in cycle to be officially over.

What does it mean for a fish-in cycle to be over? It means you can gradually reduce your ammonia and nitrite testing schedule and place more importance on your nitrate(NO3) testing. NO3 will now become the way you judge whether your tank maintenance schedule is good enough. If NO3 is maintaining at 15 to 20ppm above whatever your tap water NO3 is, then you are fine. If it keeps gradually increasing then you need better maintenance (larger percentage change at the weekly water chance or better substrate cleaning.. usually both.) A fish-in cycle being over also means you can now consider small additions (2 or 3 fish at a time is my rule of thumb if they are medium small fish) with a week or two in-between for the filter to catch up. This assumes you have done the usual stocking plan considerations and are not going to be overstocking.

The elodea plants there look to be suffering the typical starvation that comes in most new tank situations. Plants need to to get Carbon and the other 16 nutrients they need in all the proper percentages along with the right amount of light (they are a good deal harder to learn to feed than fish! ) Are you dosing anything for your plants? Sorry if we've been through this before but what are the wattages of your bulbs and how long are they on for and what is the tank volume again? It may be that you would be a good candidate for using a "liquid carbon" (Easycarbo in UK, Flourish in USA.) along with something for the macro and micro nutrients.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dohntaut]

tank volume 15 gal
lights are on for about 12 hours a day, and maybe 6 hours on 2 days during the week when i have school
the bulbs say 25W, there are 2 bulbs

 

[waterdrop]

OK, just realized they are two 25w incandescents. No idea what to do with that. You may need to consult over in the planted section to see how that modifies the usual formula that's tuned to fluorescents. I suspect light is not going to be your problem. Probably lack of nutrients is.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[dohntaut]

ok so the water test results for

2/15/10
ammonia .5 ppm
nitrite 0ppm
nitrate 20ppm
ph 7.6

hmm so ammonia came back, whats this mean other than that im still in the cycling process

 

[OldMan47]

You might want to replace the 25W bulbs with some of those spiral tube fluorescent bulbs instead. It depends on the fixture whether or not you can fit them in. A 13W spiral will produce more light than the 25W incandescent bulb and will be cooler in the light fixture.

 

[waterdrop]

hmm so ammonia came back, whats this mean other than that im still in the cycling process

It just tells you that the sources of ammonia are out-producing the consumers of ammonia, the bacteria.

Unlike humans, who only produce CO2 as they extract O2 from air, fish not only release CO2 at their gills, they also give off quite a bit of ammonia and ammonium. This is arguably the biggest ammonia (NH3) contributor to the tank but it is joined by the ammonia created when heterotrophic bacteria break down fish waste, excess fishfood and plant debris. Your ammonia test result shows you a rough snapshot of the total from all those ammonia sources.

Meanwhile, mostly in the filter, the beneficial bacteria (little colonies of Nitrosomonas spp. tightly bound to filter media and other hard surfaces) are processing that ammonia into nitrite(NO2), passing it along to the next type of bacteria for further processing. There just aren't enough of these Nitrosomonas at the moment to handle your ammonia sources. They are extremely slow growers compared to most of the bacterial world, so it takes a while for them to build up enough numbers.

Is that what you were asking?

~~waterdrop~~