Grrr... Blooming Nitrite

[OohFeeshy]

WEll I've finally decided to ditch the Tetra all in one test (thank goodness) so went to the shop and bought some good fishy things- Frozen bloodworm, Nitrite test kit, hamster food (not for the fish, don't worry). So I eagerly tested my water. Umm.. It told me the nitrite was 0.5 mg/l. How can I get it down to 0 fairly soon? It has been cycling since the day after New Year, I did a fishless for a week, got guppies and cycled with them for 2 weeks. It's a 5 gallon tank. I've done a 75% water change (there are no fish at the moment but I've been adding fish food). The reason I want it down soon is that the LPS had such a cute betta... It was so cute, nothing special to look at but the evil staff had put it in with a tank of 100 plus neons! It looked a bit nipped, and wouldn't come out the tube.... ahh...

 

[canarsie11]

You did a fishless cycle for a week, and then cycled with fish? i do not understand.

While you clear that up, do you have Ammonia test?

 

[OohFeeshy]

Lol I know my cycling was a bit stupid I was doing a fishless with fish food, then we went to a shop and they had some fish that I liked so mum made me get them in case they didn't have them again. So they died after a few weeks. Although they kind of finished off the cycling. If it has finished No I haven't got an ammonia kit yet, I didn't have enough money on me.

 

[canarsie11]

Only problem is you dont know how much ammonia is in the tank?

Why do you need to know? First Ammonia is bad for fish.

Secondly, for example if there no ammonia you can assume nitrite is coming down, and your near the end of cycle.

But with not knowing, you can be easily entering the nitrite spike. My point is you dont know if nitrite is coming down or has yet to spike.

 

[bettaninja]

the only thing I could do to get the nitrite down was to do a 50% water change on a 155litre tank. I had similar readings to you, nitrite between 0.3 to 0.8mg/L (my kit doesn't read 0.5mg/L). It wasn't as high as 0.8 but definitely over 0.3. My ammonia was close to 0 at the time.

I've had to do a couple more water changes to get the nitrites steady under 0.3 and I think today they are starting to go down.

I have 6 danios in my tank at the moment and I put them in there after 2 weeks of adding Sera Nitrivec to my tank which was meant to be a biostarter. My ammonia and nitrite readings were both low at the time. My ammonia never went up after I added the fish but the nitrites did.

 

[G_Sharky]

a water change during a nitrite spike is good if you have fish on it, but if your doing a fishless cycle then I wouldn't bother doing a water change because your just delaying the cylce....If you want your cycle to finished early there's a bunch of products that you could buy that would absorb ammonia and nitrite like Nitro-Zorb....

 

[OohFeeshy]

Well I will get an ammonia test kit soon. I had a rubbish one but am slowly getting the other test kits. Although the betta I wanted is gone but luckilly I have a credit note at another shop which should cover 1 betta. Or a test kit

 

[newfishies]

are you still doing the fishless cycle now that your fish have died? there has not been a source of ammonia for the bacteria since they died. i think you need to keep up the ammonia supply (fish food) for the bacteria, otherwise the ones that turn ammonia to nitrite will die off and your tank will re-cycle when you add fish in again...
the water change is not needed at this point, because you don't have fish in there, and my guess is that the tank is not fully cycled (although hard to tell without all the tests ammonia, nitrite and nitrate).