New Member With First Weekly Water Change Experience

[waterdrop]

Totally agree with MW - the most important thing for you at this stage is to keep up the huge daily water changes (with conditioner and rough temperature matching) and then the next most important thing is to find the liquid tests (ammonia, first priority, nitrite(NO2) is a close second priority, pH is third priority and finally nitrate(NO3.))

The reason the liquid tests are the next most important priority is because what they tell you can relieve you of some of those difficult water changes (re-homing the fish can do that also of course.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Dukhani]

OK , currently am on daily 75% water change till I find a good ammonia testing kit
My tank is 25 gallons, so what is the reading that I should get to be safe from ammonia??

 

[Miss Wiggle]

ideally you want both ammonia and nitrite to be at 0, any level of either of these is dangerous to the fish.

while you're doing the water changes you need to test the water regularly and do enough water changes to keep the ammonia and nitrite down below 0.25ppm - this might mean more than one large water change a day at first.

as i say though, without a test kit it's really blind guess work so just do as many large changes as you can until you get that test kit.

 

[Dukhani]

I did as you said Miss Wiggle, I went to the pet store and got extra filter sponge from a healthy tank, the pet store owner didn't mind giving it to me cuz he placed a bigger filter three days ago in that tank, so he was taking it out anyway, I got it in a bag with some water of the same tank, when I got back home i placed it in my filter and worked the filter again, but before that I changed 70% of the tank water, tomorrow I will do the test for NO2, so far I couldn't find ammonia testing kit

 

[Miss Wiggle]

that great news you got the filter media in there, that will make a significant difference. you're still working on guess work without that test kit but you should be somewhere near out of the woods with the mature media in there.