My New 10 Gallon And Glowlight Tetras.

[the_lock_man]

Because it's a small tank, the ammonia and nitrite concentrations build up quickly. I appreciate what you say about being exhausted when you get home, but keeping the ammonia and nitrite levels down is the key to having healthy fish at the end of the cycle.

Ultimately, you need to do the best you can for the fish - if that means forcing yourself to do a big change, because you have an ammonia level of 3ppm (not an unreasonable example), then that's what is best for the fish, but if you can't then you have to find the best practical solution.

I don't want to sound like I'm sneering at you because you can't do water changes every day, and I hope you aren't taking it that way.

Nah, don't worry about it. You've been very helpful.

I've been testing the water and the ammonia levels appear to go up to about 0.5-1.0ppm over a period of 3 days. So, would this be indicative that it'd be OK to just do a large water change (as large as I can without dumping out all of the water) every 3 days? I could manage that. I've also noticed that my water conditioner says it detoxifies ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Is this maybe why it's not building up as quickly as expected? I certainly have not seen anything as high as 3ppm.

The "safe" limit is 0.25ppm. I use the inverted commas because anything other than 0ppm is poisoning the fish, but there needs to be a practical target safe limit, and that is 0.25ppm. It sounds as though you may well be ok with a big change every 2 days - I can't say for definite because we don't know yet. Keep testing regularly, and see how it goes with that regime.

What dechlorifier/tapsafe are you using?

From I understand, you have to change at least 50% every day, sometimes twice daily, if you see Ammonia or Nitrite at all, let alone 0.5 - 1.0! If you leave it for a few days between the water changes the Nitrite and Ammonia could well kill your fish.

kordon AmQuel Plus. I didn't actually see any ammonia until about 3 days after I'd filled up the tank. So then I changed almost all of the water. Unfortunately as I said before there will be many occasions upon which I simply will not have the time or energy to change the water that often. Hence I am hoping and praying that since ammonia appears to take 2-3 days to build up that high, I will be fine just changing 90-95% of the water every 2-3 days instead of every day.

I've never used that particular dechlor, but I would assume it does the same as Prime (which is what I use). Certainly, in terms of ammonia, it doesn't remove it, it binds it to another ion, which makes it less toxic for a period of 24-48 hours. The filter bacteria will still grow using this safer version, and your test kit can't tell the difference between the safe and the toxic versions. TBH, I'm not sure how it deals with nitrite, but I believe it's still only a temporary measure, and doesn't become invisible to tet kits (maybe one of the experts in aquatic chemistry can help me out here). Nitrate isn't toxic at the kind of levels we see in a well-maintained aquarium.

Update: Okay something weird happened with the filter. I unplugged it to change the water, and when I plugged it back in, it wasn't working. I could hear the motor running but there was no suction. I emptied it and refilled it up with water again, and it worked though not right away. Did I do something wrong? How can I keep this from happening again?

It occasionally happens to me, but not very often - I've always put it down to an airlock in the tubes. Don't panic unless it happens every time.

 

[Skydive]

Okay, thank you for all your help! It's much appreciated. I think my fish are happier now, at least 2 of them are. The other one still hangs around in the back corner and rarely comes out. I'll be posting again if I have any more questions/problems.