Need Help With Nitrate And Whitespot Asap!

[Eigdoog]

Hello,

First off, one of my angel fishes have fin rot. I have been treating the water with primafix since Friday last week to help with the fin rot. However, I have noticed that my clown loaches now have very bad whitespot now.

I read on here that a good way to treat whitespot is to do a waterchange and then raise the temperature. Before i did the waterchange i tested my water and the nitrate levels have GONE THROUGH THE ROOF . The testing tube is literally bright purple. Way past 3.3, the purple/pink is VERY strong.

I have gone to my lfs and they said to treat the nitrate levels before the whitespot as the nitrate will kill the fish faster. They gave me Bactinettes (small black bead type things which go in the filter and work as a good bacteria starter, hence which should sort my nitrate levels out). They said not to do a water change as this will raise the amount of whitespot parasites in the water which will make the fish even worse. I added the Bactinettes to the filter and three days later there is no change in the level of nitrate (the Bactinettes should have worked within 24hours).

Now i am stuck as to what to do. I either do a water change to sort the level of nitrate out because the colour of it is crazy. Or i either treat the whitespot and make the condition of the water even worse.

What do you suggest?

 

[Eigdoog]

Anyone please?

 

[staffy3453]

the bacteria you put in your filter media will only help reduce ammonia and nitrite, then end product is nitrate which you reduce by the water changes, i would do a few water changes over the next few days then treat the water with a white spot treatment (because once you put the treatment in you have to wait up to 10 days for the cycle to complete) you could raise the temp up a bit to speed the cycle up, but add a bubble wall as the medication normally reduces oxygen in the water so does raising the temp..hope this helps..

 

[Fish2u]

I have been told several times that these mumbo-jumbo bacteria soups do not work. I haven't use any of these yet so I can't say whether the stuff you are using really does any good !
If I can find some extra $$ , I would set up a new tank and experiment with TurboStart, BioSpira, Cycle etc and publish a detailed research report.

As far as the nitrates are concerned, check your tap water and make sure it doesn't contain high nitrate. I think doing large water changes is the only way to reduce nitrate (though I read somewhere that there are anaerobic bacterias that transfrom nitrate to No2 gas).

For ich, add coppersafe, set the temp above 87F (over next couple of days), turn the airstone at full blast and watch.

 

[staffy3453]

yeah dont think they really do much because they have to stay chilled an most of the time an they could have been out of the fridge then back in etc etc! mine did bugger all! i also think the lfs shop saying not to do water changes was a wrong you should be doing them because 1 stage in the parasites cycle is spent on the substrate so if you can "hoover2 the floor while doing the water change that will help also in another stage they are free swimming so that would reduce the number of them in there...

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

Well first of all...are we talking about NitrItes or NitrAtes...
NitrItes are usually measured in much lower ppms than NitrAtes

If you are using the API Master test kit... the NitrIte test goes from Blue to Purple....the NitrAte test goes from yellow to red. Other brands I'm not sure about.

If it is your NitrItes that are that high...you NEED to get them down to less than .25 ppm ASAP. NitrItes are toxic to your fish. Bactinettes may or may not help depending on if you got a good batch or not. Yes, most cycling products are junk...but if Bactinettes is truly the UK equivalent to Bio-Spira it may help.

If it is your NitrAtes that are high...get them below 20 ppm.

Water changes will not make ICH worse, and may help with the fin rot. The increased heat treatment also usually involves the use of Aquarium salt, BUT I'm not sure if loaches are sensitive to salt so find out about that first.