Male Guppies

[dudleyd]

it says a bit higher up that you need to be doing 50% water cahanges. This will instantly half the ammount of ammonia in the tank.

 

[OldMan47]

By now you probably need to do a 75% change.

 

[glyndawn]

wont that increse the nitrate or nitrite

 

[waterdrop]

No, water changes will remove ammonia(NH3), nitrite(NO2) and nitrate(NO3), not to mention dozens of other toxic things we don't measure. Water changes are a good aquarists best friend! But, like anything, your full understanding of them will grow with experience.

Ammonia, even in tiny amounts, causes permanent gill damage that can lead to death or shortened lives for tropical fish. This type of toxicity is much more important to control than other more minor worries like the supposed shock of a water change.

In your situation you need to start now with a 75% water change (if you haven't done it already) which means turning off the heater and probably the filter and removing about 3/4 of the water you see. The return water needs to be "conditioned" (by using a good product that removes chlorine/chloramines) and roughly temperature matched (using your hand to judge is good enough.) Normally water is removed from the tank by using a "gravel-cleaning" siphon which is plunged into the gravel to stir out the debris. If you don't yet have a siphon like that, the water change by any means is still more important though.

After the water change you should wait a while, perhaps 20 minutes, to allow things to settle and mix and then perform ammonia, nitrite(NO2) and pH tests with your API kit and post them up here for the members to see.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[glyndawn]

hi i did a 75% water change yesterday these are my results today


ammonia 0.25
ph 7
nitrite 0.50
nitrate 5.0

how do these look now the fish dont seem to be rubbing at bottom now they just chase one other is this right with male guppies

 

[Harlequins]

Has your ammonia is still 0.25 & nitrite is now 0.50 i would do another very large waterchange,this is still too high for the fish. Ideally needs to be 0.

 

[glyndawn]

hiya folks happy new year to you all

i did another 75%water change yesterday these are my readings today


ph 7
nitrite 0
nitrate 0.50
ammonia 0.25

just doesnt seem to be shifting

im not sure if i have the filter set up right its a fluval 2 plus with no instructions at all

when it come i took the bottom of it which had two rough pads in it

it also came with a smaller polyster pad and a small carbon pad am i correct in saying these are left out?

 

[fishyfeet]

ive just put 7 male guppies in my tank yesterday

When you add new fish, the ammonia levels wth rise suddenly and you need to get the filter time to increase its bacterial load, you need to add fish a few at a time and restrict feeding to a bare minimum, test the water daily and do water changes until the filter is coping with the new amount of waste. The best way to do it, is to add more food to the tank several days before adding new fish, hense increasing the bacterial level in advance. Guppies are pretty tough they should be ok if you keep the levels down a bit. di

 

[glyndawn]

thanks di

what should i do leave it a few days then check again as when i did a water change yesterday they didnt like it at all also does the filter sound like ive set it up correct

 

[fishyfeet]

I would check it tomorrow, if its increasing you need to change more water and more often, I wouldnt feed them for a couple of days (they wont die, honest) that will reduce the waste production, and the filter should catch up in a few days, its only a short term problem. If the filter sounds funny i would take it out and have a good clean out, dont rinse sponges under the tap only in tank water, to be honest i would touch the sponges, just have a fiddle with the machanics to see if its not right, taking it to bits and putting it back again could be that simple. good luck, di

 

[mattlee]

thanks di

what should i do leave it a few days then check again as when i did a water change yesterday they didnt like it at all also does the filter sound like ive set it up correct

if you have ammonia then a water change is needed asap. leave for an hour and test again if you have ammonia still then repeat until a 0 reading is given. then test after 12 hours and repeat water changes if an ammonia result of over 0. im affraid this is what you will need to keep doing as you are in a fish in cycle.....
when adding the new water make sure its of a similar temp within a couple of degrees, add dechlor and add slowly to not stress the fish as much.

 

[OldMan47]

The nitrite reading indicates a need for some water change to improve things.

The ammonia reading may be coming from your tap water. When we dechlorinate tap water, the bond that holds chlorine and ammonia together in chloramine is broken. The chlorine is neutralized and the ammonia is converted to its less toxic form. After I treat a tap water sample, before adding it to a tank, I read almost 1 ppm ammonia in my tap water. In my mature tanks, the filter deals with it quickly, but the ammonia is there from the start anyway. Please test your tap water ammonia after adding the dechlorinator and find out if you are seeing ammonia from the fish or from the new water. If it is from the new water, there is no point in doing a water change to remove it. The conversion of the ammonia to its less toxic form only lasts a day or two so just ignoring the ammonia is also not a good idea, but in your case the ammonia processing seems to be happening as the nitrites are coming from that conversion.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with all the others. The most common problem a beginner in a new Fish-In cycling situation has is hesitancy. The beginner usually worries that the water changes are somehow dangerous or that if too many water changes are performed that the bacteria won't grow or won't grow fast enough in the biomedia of the filter.

Neither of these is true. To the fish, having ammonia or nitrite(NO2) above 0.25ppm is a major stress, potententially significantly worse than even a somewhat poorly performed water change. The bacteria, meanwhile, will continue to grow and expand their biofilms even if our test kits measure zero ppm ammonia. This is because even in a perfectly working aquarium, there is a constant flow of ammonia and oxygen, down at a low level, to the bacteria despite the level not being high enough for our kits to respond.

So the goal in Fish-In cycling is to get those toxins going back and forth between zero ppm (right after a water change) and 0.25ppm (at their height later in the day (or the next day) right before you do the next water change. For some Fish-In cyclers, this means they can go a couple days before the next water change but in your case I suspect the combination of a slightly underperforming filter (possibly, not really known of course) and having added what clearly is a larger fish stocking than one would normally for a fish-in cycle, you may initially have to perform quite a few large water changes.

The good news though is that if you do do several of these, often it will taper off and you will need fewer to maintain it and all the while, the filter bacteria are growing and helping you in your task more and more. You of course are experiencing why, for beginners, a fish-in cycle is a difficult and not recommended situation, as compared to a fishless.

Hang in there and keep us informed!
~~waterdrop~~

 

[glyndawn]

hi folks

well got up this morning and one of me guppies where just sat at the top very unhappy so checked the water again and the same

ph 7
nitrite 0
nitrate 0.50
ammonia 0.25


it just doesnt seem to be moving i checked the pads in the filter and they are a very slight green is this right

so what i have done is got a filter pad out of a fully running tank and just sqeezed it in to this tank will this help and put my unhappy guppie in the old tank to see if he cheers up but he is just pointing upwards then he moves about then same points upwards

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, a fish-in cycle can be a rough thing on fish. Not only that but guppies are not always the most hardy fish to be introduced early to new tanks, they are better off after the tanks are fully cycled and seasoned by a few months, although a lot of the problem comes from differences in the indivual guppies themselves.

I suppose you might also double check your chosen temperature and your given hardness with those here that keep a lot of livebearers to make sure that isn't also maybe making things more difficult.

~~waterdrop~~