Nervous - Might Have Added Fish A Bit Too Soon

[SlyT]

All,

Ive been fishless cycling my tank since beginning of may. Ive been adding houshold ammonia to simulate fish. The Ammonia has been being processed fine in the perscribed time, Nitrates did start to rise early on, but my plants helped here.

I got a few mollies and zebra danios earlier today - which all seem happy enough.

My only concern is Nitrites. I have the API Master freshwater testkit. The colour after 5mins is blue. HOWEVER the liquid goes purple first. I hadnt realised this could mean that the Nitrites are in fact very high - I only read about this today.

Firstly Im sorry if Ive screwed up, it wasnt intentional.

Secondly what can I do ? if they are high, which I am not conviced about either way - is there a buffer product that can lock the Nitrites away ?

Kindest regards - Alex

 

[Geoff1991]

When you put the drops in for nitrite, do they sink and go purple?

Edit: Theres no need to apologise, we're humans... We all make mistakes from time to time.

 

[arobinson1984]

I've read about this happening before and I can't remember what the outcome was.

You sure your adding exactly 5 drops? I know any variation in the amount of drops can have an ill effect on the results.

Also are the test tubes cleaned out after use? I think you should clean them after use with tap water then i normally swill them with tank water before using them.

Mine goes straight blue and stays blue. Its wierd that yours detects nitrite as soon as the drops hit the water but then seem to clear back to blue.

The only thing you can do if in fact you do have high nitrites is some large water changes. Do a 50%-60% water change, wait an hour then test again and see if the same happens.

If you do 2 or 3 large water changes over a day and you still are getting the same results then you may have a prob with the testing kit.

Andy

 

[Geoff1991]

^ I do know if they sink to the bottom and go purple instantly, the nitrites are off the chart.

Ive seen it a couple of times while fishless cycling.

 

[SlyT]

3 or 4 of the mollies have died.

I feel pretty bad. Gonna do a 70% water change.

A

 

[SlyT]

3 or 4 of the mollies have died.

I feel pretty bad. Gonna do a 70% water change.

A

More mollies dead Danios seem ok ?

I tried doing a test on a small amount of tank water, with rest as tank water. it purples on the bottom still. after 5 mins it settles on the pale bluey colour. does this mean my nitirites are in excess of 20ppm ?!?

Help

 

[indigoj]

I think all you can do is waterchanges, what dechlorinator do you use? Seachem Prime can help de-toxify nitrites here is a link to info about it.

[URL="http/www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html"]http/www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html[/URL]

 

[SlyT]

Cheers indigoj hopefully Ill find some at an LFS or pets at home.

Once ive got the levels down Ill move to silent cycling.

 

[indigoj]

Don't think Pets at Home stock it but many smaller LFS do, if not you can get it cheap on ebay, that's where I get mine.

 

[arobinson1984]

In the meantime I'd recommend you continue with 2-3 large water changes a day until the levels get down to a level where the test kit will give an accurate reading.

The reason danios seem fine is that they are one of the hardiest fish about but the high nitrites may be doing damage that hasnt yet become noticable so keep the water changes up.

Andy

 

[SlyT]

Right,

As mentioned in the other bit of this thread, my surviving fish are having a holiday at the LFS. They were in the tank for approximatley 18hours, so fingers crossed the remaining fish (5x zebra danios and 5 Mollies) might make it. I dont expect them all to, but lets have some faith.

I am a little annoyed about the API kit; having Nitrites off the chart looking as if there are zero is not a great design in my opinion. The LFS had a different Liquid test kit and confirmed the Nitrites are very high.

I bought some mature media and filter gunk for about £6 - they sell sponges at retail price, but charge them with media from their filtration system.

Currently my stats are:

PH 8; Ammonia 2; Nitrite 2

Like I mentioned earlier, the tank is almost there, and the above are the results from less than 6hrs after loading with Ammonia .

Ammonia is processed in 12 hours, but I stupidly thought that after a few days of seeing blue in Nitrites, it was finished. Turns out I needed a bit longer to get the Nitrites down.

Thanks to all for any help offered, once again I feel awful about the fish that died. The LFS said it should take less than a week for the rest of the cycle to complete now I have a load of extra mature media in there.

Emergency over, so if a Mod wants to move this somewhere else, or leave it hear for now, then that would be fine with me.

Kind regards

SlyT

 

[indigoj]

Sounds like a decent LFS. Good Luck. Glad you're nearly there!

 

[SlyT]

Sounds like a decent LFS. Good Luck. Glad you're nearly there!

Yeah, World of Fishes, East Grinstead for anyone who is interested.

Recommended !