New 64l Tank...a Few Problems

[Curiosity101]

Can I please point you towards my reply.... Please read it carefully.

Ammonia of between 1.2-2 ppm doesn't require 'little water changes every day' is require 'at least 2 LARGE water changes RIGHT NOW', levels like that are enough to seriously damage your fishes skin, gills, eyes etc.

That needs to be brought down to 0.25ppm at the very most. For this you need to do at least 3 x 50% water changes today.

I'll be repeating myself if I say anything else as it ALL IN MY FIRST POST.
But here are the two big points that apply from my main post.

DONT TRUST FISH SHOPS

BUY A LIQUID TEST KIT OF YOUR OWN

I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding my first post if any of it was unclear.

 

[Littlemonkey]

My God, if I had used my urine in the Tank all the fish would have been

 

[waynelle]

Can I please point you towards my reply.... Please read it carefully.

Ammonia of between 1.2-2 ppm doesn't require 'little water changes every day' is require 'at least 2 LARGE water changes RIGHT NOW', levels like that are enough to seriously damage your fishes skin, gills, eyes etc.

That needs to be brought down to 0.25ppm at the very most. For this you need to do at least 3 x 50% water changes today.

I'll be repeating myself if I say anything else as it ALL IN MY FIRST POST.
But here are the two big points that apply from my main post.

DONT TRUST FISH SHOPS

BUY A LIQUID TEST KIT OF YOUR OWN

I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding my first post if any of it was unclear.

Sorry I didnt reply to your 1st post, not being ignorant, just haven't got round to replying to everyone yet

So you recommend we do 3 50% water changes immediately? We will do that then. But what would you recommend if there is still not much change? As we have done about 5 or 6 50% water changes in the past 3 weeks and its still to high...or is that the problem...because we aren't doing all the changes at once and we're waiting a few days??


We are going to buy our own kit, we have seen an API test kit and from what I have read, they are the best ones??

Thanks.

 

[Curiosity101]

I wasn't trying to say you were ignorant. Just wanted to make sure you didn't miss it.

And yes, the fish are making waste all the time. You need to do the 3 x 50% all in one go (within a day at the very most), and then once it's at a managable level you just do water changes as they are needed. Almost always this means large daily changes, but sometimes it'll mean multiple daily changes. Just whatever size it takes to return levels to 0.25ppm or lower.
Basically test twice a day for the first few days so you know exactly how much ammonia and/or nitrites are being produced imbetween tests, and use these values to work out what sized water changes and what frequency you need to do.

And API is the highest recommended kit, and is the one I use myself. There is only one which is 'better' (ie. more accurate), and that is the salifert or seachem....I can't remember off the top of my head.
But they tend to be more expensive, and API is easily good enough to keep your fish safe.

 

[waynelle]

I wasn't trying to say you were ignorant. Just wanted to make sure you didn't miss it.

And yes, the fish are making waste all the time. You need to do the 3 x 50% all in one go (within a day at the very most), and then once it's at a managable level you just do water changes as they are needed. Almost always this means large daily changes, but sometimes it'll mean multiple daily changes. Just whatever size it takes to return levels to 0.25ppm or lower.
Basically test twice a day for the first few days so you know exactly how much ammonia and/or nitrites are being produced imbetween tests, and use these values to work out what sized water changes and what frequency you need to do.

And API is the highest recommended kit, and is the one I use myself. There is only one which is 'better' (ie. more accurate), and that is the salifert or seachem....I can't remember off the top of my head.
But they tend to be more expensive, and API is easily good enough to keep your fish safe.

We are going to do the 3 changes now, couldnt do it yesterday as we had a very busy day. Thankfully, all the fish seem very happy and active so it seems they have got used to the ammonia which I am happy about as we certainly don't want to loose them. The main thing we were worried about was taking all the bacteria out of the tank but we are told that the bacteria is in fact in the filter, not the water?

The API test kit will most def be a purchase then.

 

[JustKia]

Umm fish don't "get used to" ammonia.
If you're "too busy" to do the necessary work to prevent your fish from suffering maybe you should rethink keeping fish?
I did a fish in cycle, so I'm not having a go on that side of things but I was totally prepared to put in the hours of hard work required to ensure that the fish didn't suffer. That meant that we were doing multiple huge water changes every day to begin with, testing the water stats and doing changes if ammonia showed above 0 at all.

At the end of the day all you are doing is making it more likely that you won't enjoy fish keeping as you're fish won't live as long as they should and you'll wonder why they keep dying and end up thinking "stuff this, it'ain't worth it if they keep dying".

Make the change now and you can at least minimise the damage that is being done.
Please take a read of the "fish-in cycle" link in my siggie. It really helped me to understand what I needed to do and now I get lots of pleasure from my fish.

Your filter is what cycles not the water and as fish are constantly producing waste the bacs are constantly being fed.
The ammonia, and shortly to follow, the nitrItes are the EXCESS that the bacs can't yet manage as the colony isn't big enough to process them. So, removing the EXCESS means you won't be "starving" the bacs as your fish will still be producing more waste for them.

 

[waynelle]

Umm fish don't "get used to" ammonia.
If you're "too busy" to do the necessary work to prevent your fish from suffering maybe you should rethink keeping fish?
I did a fish in cycle, so I'm not having a go on that side of things but I was totally prepared to put in the hours of hard work required to ensure that the fish didn't suffer. That meant that we were doing multiple huge water changes every day to begin with, testing the water stats and doing changes if ammonia showed above 0 at all.

At the end of the day all you are doing is making it more likely that you won't enjoy fish keeping as you're fish won't live as long as they should and you'll wonder why they keep dying and end up thinking "stuff this, it'ain't worth it if they keep dying".

Make the change now and you can at least minimise the damage that is being done.
Please take a read of the "fish-in cycle" link in my siggie. It really helped me to understand what I needed to do and now I get lots of pleasure from my fish.

Your filter is what cycles not the water and as fish are constantly producing waste the bacs are constantly being fed.
The ammonia, and shortly to follow, the nitrItes are the EXCESS that the bacs can't yet manage as the colony isn't big enough to process them. So, removing the EXCESS means you won't be "starving" the bacs as your fish will still be producing more waste for them.

FYI, we aren't too busy to keep fish, we were out for the day yesterday so couldnt do 3 50% water changes, we had been doing 25% water changes everyday like we had been advised from our LFS.

We are doing the 3 big changes NOW !!

Thanks.

 

[JustKia]

FYI, we aren't too busy to keep fish, we were out for the day yesterday so couldnt do 3 50% water changes, we had been doing 25% water changes everyday like we had been advised from our LFS.

We are doing the 3 big changes NOW !!

Thanks.

Sorry, but that was what you said - that you were too busy to do the necessary water changes
Instead of getting defensive please use the awesome advice you have been given by various people on this thread, unless you don't care if your fish live shortened lives...

 

[Curiosity101]

Aside from the busyness comment, I do agree with what Kia said. It was a fair point she made about the fish not 'getting used' to the ammonia. Sadly that's not how it works. Think of the ammonia in the same way you would think of any human poison. It is doing damage if it's present, even if the fish don't show it.

Good to hear you're doing the water changes. But just to point out, a 50% change on a 64l tank isn't a big water change. It's actually just a bit smaller than my weekly change! Hehe. So don't be disheartened.

 

[waynelle]

Well we have bought an API test kit that test's all the necessary things, the amonia is now down to about 0.50 after 125% water change, and its gradually going down we have done another 50% water change today and it dropped a little so we our going to do another 100% water change tomorrow. The fish still seem fine and happy no sign of any damage to any of them, even the 2 neon tetras still seem fine

Also since we now have a test kit we done a test on friends tank that has never been tested for anything but PH, and it seems very overstocked only a 60liter fish R fun hex tank, they do a weekly 1/3 water change and thats about it but surprisingly everything was fine the amonia was 0 the test just stayed yellow and Ph was about 7, and nitrite was fine aswell the tank is about 4 years old so im guessing the filter is doing a good job of dealing with all the waste, is they anything we can take from that tank to help our process along, like taking something from the filter (the filter is in the hood of the tank and has bio-ball's, filter floss and a bag of carbon) that would fit into out interpet PF2 filter?

Thanks

 

[Curiosity101]

You need to be aiming to keep ammonia at 0.25 or below (if it was 0.5 before a 50% change then that will have brought it to 0.25, but if it were me I'd do another 50% now to allow you a bit of extra time overnight when you obviously wont be testing)

As for the other tank...
In a fully cycled possibly overstocked tank either ammonia, nitrite or Nitrate could cause a problem.
EG. Put a huge dirty fish in a small tank but with a big filter and you wont have any ammonia and nitrite, but your nitrates will skyrocket.
And nitrates in high numbers can cause just as many problems and Ammonia and Nitrite.

What is it that's in the 60l?

 

[waynelle]

Sorry i should have said the nitrate was fine aswell, i will check to see what is in the other tank, from what i remember seeing they is 3 zebra fish, about 6 tiger barbs, 1 female fighter, 2 neon tetras, and about 3 harlequins and 3 other tetra like fish

 

[waynelle]

Aside from the busyness comment, I do agree with what Kia said. It was a fair point she made about the fish not 'getting used' to the ammonia. Sadly that's not how it works. Think of the ammonia in the same way you would think of any human poison. It is doing damage if it's present, even if the fish don't show it.

Good to hear you're doing the water changes. But just to point out, a 50% change on a 64l tank isn't a big water change. It's actually just a bit smaller than my weekly change! Hehe. So don't be disheartened.

We have tested the water again today and it seems to of went back up to around 0.50 so we are going to do a 100% change and see what the water is like after this. We will continue to do as many changes as it needs to get the reading around 0.25 or less

On the subject of our friends tank, what would you recommend we can take out of that tank to put in ours to help the cycle along a little?

Thanks

 

[Curiosity101]

Only thing worth taking is filter media. Bio balls is probably the media likely to have the highest proportion of bacteria on. 2 or so should be enough to get your cycle kick started.

Can you make room for them in your filter?

 

[waynelle]

Only thing worth taking is filter media. Bio balls is probably the media likely to have the highest proportion of bacteria on. 2 or so should be enough to get your cycle kick started.

Can you make room for them in your filter?

Well we have the Interpet PF2 filter, most of the filter is full due to the carbon and bacteria sponges but Im sure we could make room somewhere.

We have been doing about 3 50% water changes everyday but still, when we test the water again the following day, its just rising again to around 1.0
Shouldn't the filter be able to cope with this now? after all, it has been set up about 6 weeks now, when we do the changes we test and its around 0.25 then the day after it will rise to 0.50 - 1.0. I would of thought there should be enough bacteria in the tank to deal with this now but that doesnt seem the case...