Freshwater Aquariums

[TraceyB]

Running a tank with or without carbon is a person preference. Most people in this forum are on the no carbon until needed for removing medications side of the argument. i have ran tanks with and without carbon. The key to carbon is the quality. Without going into a big chemistry lesson, low quality carbon will require changing approximately every 3 days as the carbon will be "used up". higher quality carbon (ie the stuff in tap water filters) Will last longer, anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month, depending on if there is anything in your water. Carbon does help to eliminate odors, and in my opinion it does help to "polish" the water, give it that little extra sparkly effect. On the other side of the coin, those odors are often a pre-cursor to something going wrong in your tank. Here is a very good site that discusses the pros and cons with no bias. It also goes into detail on the quality of carbon if you chose to go that route.

http/www.ratemyfishtank.com/articles/106

I got that opinion from reading other posts and other articles online. Thanks for the link, I read that site article yesterday. Was very helpful...... I have put carbon back in but I don't think It is very good quality though.

 

[CezzaXV]

The presence or otherwise of carbon and live plants should make no difference to your pH levels. There have been stories of people with heavily planted tanks not having to worry about nitrates, but you'd need to be seriously heavily planted and have great lighting and CO2, which is beyond the scope of what all but the most dedicated can hope to achieve.

As for your test readings...
Nitrate test solutions can have a tendency to solidify in the bottle and give false low readings, hence why you got a much higher reading from the LFS. To get around this, whack the hell out of bottle no. 2 on a desk before doing the test.

As for ammonia and nitrite, there is no normal "range". Either they are both zero, or there is something wrong with your tank.

 

[TraceyB]

The presence or otherwise of carbon and live plants should make no difference to your pH levels. There have been stories of people with heavily planted tanks not having to worry about nitrates, but you'd need to be seriously heavily planted and have great lighting and CO2, which is beyond the scope of what all but the most dedicated can hope to achieve.

As for your test readings...
Nitrate test solutions can have a tendency to solidify in the bottle and give false low readings, hence why you got a much higher reading from the LFS. To get around this, whack the hell out of bottle no. 2 on a desk before doing the test.

As for ammonia and nitrite, there is no normal "range". Either they are both zero, or there is something wrong with your tank.

Short of feeling stupid, which I feel some of the experienced 'fish keepers' appear to think of us Newbies I'm afraid to ask what could be wrong with my tank.. .. (Thread raised and was highly critical of people asking for help, which is a pity as I have gained alot of knowledge since joining. can't seem to find it anymore I wonder if the moderator deleted it)

Thanks

 

[CezzaXV]

The point I was trying to make was that there is no normal range for ammonia or nitrite. As I said, they're either zero or there's something wrong. The presence of ANY amount of ammonia or nitrite is toxic to fish.

If either of them are above zero, it means that either you're not done cycling yet, or you've been cycled but something has gone wrong. Either way warrants a massive, immediate water change. The presence of either ammonia or nitrite would certainly explain the dead neon you talked about.

If the levels are indeed zero then you can disregard what I just wrote, but we see a lot of newbies who when asked say their ammonia/nitrite levels are "normal" or "fine" without giving an actual number and it usually turns out they have no idea what any of their readings actually mean and the cause of their problems is pretty obvious to the more experienced fishkeeper.

 

[TraceyB]

The point I was trying to make was that there is no normal range for ammonia or nitrite. As I said, they're either zero or there's something wrong. The presence of ANY amount of ammonia or nitrite is toxic to fish.

If either of them are above zero, it means that either you're not done cycling yet, or you've been cycled but something has gone wrong. Either way warrants a massive, immediate water change. The presence of either ammonia or nitrite would certainly explain the dead neon you talked about.

If the levels are indeed zero then you can disregard what I just wrote, but we see a lot of newbies who when asked say their ammonia/nitrite levels are "normal" or "fine" without giving an actual number and it usually turns out they have no idea what any of their readings actually mean and the cause of their problems is pretty obvious to the more experienced fishkeeper.

Yes ammonia levels are very important....... I would say even a newbie should know that... I have been doing daily water changes (20%)but possibly that isn't enough........ Thanks for your advice