My Tank Is Poison- Now What? (Update Post 5)

[trianglekitty]

I'm very new to fish keeping and only got into it to save a fish at work that was being neglected. I started with a five gallon, then upgraded him to a 10 gallon.

I test the water with API test strips every day (I'm paranoid like that), but after having the five gallon running for three weeks, it always tested at zero or close to it with ammonia and such. The water looks very good, and I have a number of live plants. The fish seem to be doing well, although my gourami seems rather stressed and moves in a very set pattern all day.

Even though the test strips test low, I've been doing a water change every week between 10 to 20%. When I gravel vac, I get a lot of debris, but I only get to vac in a few places before I've removed the amount of water I need to. So I feel like I'm leaving a lot of waste and debris behind. Is that normal? I can't see any way to clean the gravel thoroughly without removing too much water.

I'm a bit of neat freak, so it bothers me that the gravel is hiding a lot of junk. Just want to make sure I'm not missing something blindingly obvious about using the gravel vac. Also, is it normal for the water to always check out alright? I did establish the tank with used filter media that was in a much later tank.

 

[Rynofasho]

I would advise you to get liquid test kits like the API Freshwater Master kit. My strips read pretty consistently different than the strips - it was just really hard to tell with them.

Do you really get down in the gravel when you vacuum? Most of the bad stuff stays on the top, so if you have a small vacuum you can just run it all along the bottom with really digging into the gravel and you will get most everything. The rest the plants can use.

But ya, if the fish seem stressed and you're wondering about your water levels, I'd get a liquid kit first.

API Kits

 

[waterdrop]

Agree. Excellent advice from Rynofasho. Over the years we've found paper test strips to be inconsistent - sometimes people report results similar to other testing techniques and sometimes (often) they are way off. As a result, many of us have come to feel that they are worse than using nothing, they sometimes cause you to make wrong decisions. A liquid kit (many of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit) may feel expensive and complicated for a 10g with a rescued fish but it is a great learning device as you find yourself drawn more in to the hobby (we hope!)

In your case, the most important thing the liquid kit will do is confirm that you are not seeing any traces of ammonia or nitrite that might be causing some of the behavior of the gourami. If you keep testing zeros over a week then probably the behavior is just normal for that gourami (they are one of the few fish that are pretty individual in their behavior) or it would really appreciate a companion or two (depends on the type though, as you don't want to overstock the little tank.)

Now let's talk about water changing. Kudos to you for knowing about and practicing good habits! You are way beyond most beginners in understanding what needs to be done! Let me suggest a couple of refinements in your thinking: There is rarely any such thing as "a water change that is too large." The two things that help any water change to be safe are the "conditioning" of the water (use of a product that neutralizes chlorine or chloramines) and secondly the rough temperature matching with the tank water (your hand is good enough for this.) In larger tanks when small water changes are performed, neither of these things may be needed but in smaller tanks with larger changes, they are a good safety factor and we highly recommend them to all beginners. In fact, I recommend that the conditioner be dosed at 1.5x to 2x whatever the bottle recommends just on the off chance that your water authority might overdose the chorine product at a time when your filter bacteria are still young and fragile. Don't dose at more than a 2x rate however as this slows down reproduction of the N-Bacs (nitrite oxidizing bacteria) and since you are in or near the end of a fish-in cycle, yours are still maturing.

Don't worry too much about not being able to gravel-vac the entire gravel bed in one go. It's common to have to cover different areas on different weeks. However, if you are the neat freak you say you are, and have the time, it's the perfect opportunity to simply do more than one clean per week if you like. Now that you know that there is no such thing as too much water changing (it's only bad for people who have gone way too long (most of a year!) without doing their changes) you will realize that how nicely you keep your substrate and tank is really your own choice (as long as you understand minimal needs of course, which you are clearly already within.) More water changes will simply keep your tank water chemistry closer to your tap water chemistry, which is quite a good thing as it allows your tap water to be an unlimited safety source for your fish in times of concern (water changes are the thing to do when in doubt about fish health!)

OK, hopes this helps answer your question and I hope your instinct for rescue (thank you, by the way, as us hobbyists always hope someone will rescue a fish not in a good situation!) will encourage you to explore the hobby further - most of us here of course have found we really like it!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Geoff-]

as above, WD's the expert!

it's worth remembering that fish rely on bacteria to survive. at least, they do if you don't fancy massive daily water changes to remove ammonia. a low maintenance aquarium is where you try to get close to a full ecosystem happening, so you need as little external input (water change) as possible. part of that cycle is waste and having stuff to process the waste (bacteria + plants). if you remove all the waste you starve that part of the ecosystem and then you are committed to being fastidious for evermore.

I know it looks gross though, i often swirl the gravel vac just above the gravel and it stirs a lot of crap into the water column which i then vacuum off. get a smaller diameter gravel vac it will let you get more waste out with less water flow. but the plants will happily feed off the waste as it decomposes so don't worry about getting every last bit.

 

[trianglekitty]

Wow- what a huge difference testing methods make!

I got the Master Test Kit and the ammonia in the tank is sky high! The test strips were reading it as zero. So thank you so much for that advice. I haven't tested the other levels yet, but I'm going to assume they're very high as well.

So clearly I need to get on top of this situation ASAP. That means daily water changes of 25%, correct? Or should I do more? The API test booklet talks about getting ammonia chips to lower the levels. Should I do that, and if so do I still do water changes?

I knew the fish looked stressed! I think one of the guppies is developing ick as well- he's got a few tiny white spots on his tail fin. I got the ich treatment and I know I need to pull the carbon from the filter, but should I treat at the same time I'm doing water changes? I would assume that's going to mess up the medication levels.

Any advice would be very welcome- I'm trying so hard to do this right, and I feel terrible that I trusted those test strips when I had a feeling the great levels were too good to be true.

 

[waterdrop]

I'm not an expert but I believe the problem with paper test strips is that the reagents are exposed to the air and can react with any moisture in that air and possibly use up their reactivity before they get used. Thus you can be using a dead strip.

Once you've progressed to disease then Wilder over in emergencies is the person for you.. but lacking that I'd say that no, partial water changes are not at all what you want, instead you want to immediately do huge changes where you barely leave a big enough puddle in the bottom for the fish to hang out before the replacement tap water comes in (this means the return water must be conditioned (to remove chlorine/chloramine) and roughly temperature matched (your hand can compare this from the removed old water to the new tap water, which can just be adjusted with hot/cold mixing tap.) Then of course you must dose or re-dose your medication. Also note that oldman47 has a link in his sig to a good ich writeup.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rynofasho]

Yep, do as large of changes as you can. I unfortunately can't do huge ones because me tap pH is way higher than my tank pH so changes over 40% tend to stress the fish but this seems to be the exception more than the rule.

Not sure what conditioner you use, but I'd double dose it for sure. It neutralizes the toxic effect of the ammonia. Yes, it may slow your cycle a bit, however it's more important now to protect the health of your fish than to ensure your cycle stays on schedule.

Yes, if you dose with meds, remove the carbon from the filter until you are ready to filter it out.

It sounds like you're doing all the right things, so just keep the faith and it should work out for you.

 

[Uriel]

Most conditioners that "remove" toxic ammonia just convert it to ammonium which is less harmful to fish but still completely acceptable to bacteria in cycle. So this shouldn't effect your cycle. + 1 for massive water change followed up by probably another tommorow.

 

[JoshuaA]

I would test for nitrite in your water as well, with high concentrations of ammonia over a period of time there is always a chance you might of kicked started a cycle. It always nice to know where abouts you are in one as well.

Good luck, I was once in your position not so long ago but now I've learnt to love the hobby and have 4 tanks between me and my girlfriend haha.

Out of curiosity what conditioner are you using? From experience I would avoid Nutrafin Aquasafe or whatever it's called but I know that doesn't neutralise Ammonia so you won't be using that.

I would recommend Seachem prime, purely because you get more bang for your buck and through doing many large water changes you are going to need quite a bit. Though quite a bit in terms of Seachem is probably a cap full for the entire cycle, though double dosing or even up to 5x as much in a bad situation is acceptable. You can pick up a bottle on ebay for around a £10 for 500ml. I've got 2 bottles, one which was used to cycle and has been sitting around for about 6 months and there is probably 3/4 left. The other is in my flat which has barely been used but always handy not to have to juggle stuff!

Finally whilst on the conditioner thing, I never noticed a slow in cycle when using seachem prime, however I have always used it during cycles over any other thing so I have nothing to gauge it against. Though I can say it was out of the ordinary in terms of results over other peoples cycle logs.