New Tank Syndrome

[waterdrop]

Sometimes it takes several very large water changes at first to get it under control, then it gets easier to handle, not sure why but many report this. WD

 

[pdclawncare]

Did an 80 percent change, did reading after came out at 2 ppm, which is lower. So i will stick with large water changes until it zeros out. Thank you all for your help

 

[JoshuaA]

Just do it down to gravel until the fish literally have no space to swim vertical then fill it up again a bit, then down to gravel again. If its at 1ppm and you do a 90% you will take it down to 0.1. Then if you fill up another 10% it will half it again to 0.05 and so on in my opinion much much better than filling the tank entirely and repeatedly and continuously diluting the ammonia ridden water. You only waste a small amount of your time compared to all of your time filling your tank up.

Alternatively you could acclimatise your fish to a heated bucket of water and just empty the tank completely and start again from 0%

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, its a real testament to how NH3 and other nitrogen compounds can "hang" with the gravel and filtration equipment! WD

 

[JoshuaA]

Yeah, its a real testament to how NH3 and other nitrogen compounds can "hang" with the gravel and filtration equipment! WD

Yeh it took a while for me and my girlfriend to get our head around this. I imagine it goes quite in depth on science on how the particles of NH3 and Nitrate "Stick" or "Hang" to things. I know a lot of bacteria in our tanks use brownian motion as a way of "moving" perhaps not by choice haha.

When me and my girlfriend went through our fish in cycle we eventually resorted to entirely removing all water and re filling. The ammonia would plummit and the water would be almost clean of it bar a readable trace this was effective for most part of the cycle though it eventually it was all in vain.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, another thing I take as a little piece of evidence for ammonia "hanging out" more in the gravel is the presence of brown algae (diatoms) on the glass just below the gravel surface level. This algae is triggered and starts in pockets of no or low flow in the circulation pattern where trace ammonia can collect (undetected by our kits) but the very fact that down in the gravel level is where you can see it first is a sign confirming what one would expect, that the gravel slows the water circulation and that substances dissolved in the water may tend to hang out in the no flow pockets more than elsewhere. I remember this from years of my previous tanks when I was young, when I definately did not know how to combat this (not that I'm great at it now )

~~waterdrop~~