Oh No! Nitrites!

[ehackler]

Recently (about 1.5 to 2 months ago) I changed my tank from a 75 gallon non drilled to a 90 gallon drilled tank with sump and power heads. My 75 gallon tank had been up and running for 5 years and the water quality was great. My ammonia/Nitrites were always 0 but toward the end of the life of my 75 I had Nitrate issues and was constantly doing water changes to keep them below 20PPM. I changed over to the new 90 gallon tank and after having the tank up and running a couple of months I am showing Nitrites in the >.1PPM range. My ammonia is 0 and My nitrates are around 10PPM.
I had my Fluval 404 canister filter running on the new tank until my SUMP broke in and got a good colony of beneficial bacteria in it and about 2 weeks ago the canister filter finally died. I have been keeping up on my water test to make sure nothing goes wrong and now this. I also have about 100lbs of Fiji live rock in the tank to help with my Biological filtration. My question is this, should I do small water changes and dose the water with Nitromax Marine until My nitrites are 0 again? Also, what do you think the main cause of this could be and do you think I will have this issue again. Has anyone ever experienced this when changing to a new tank? I don’t want anything to happen to my pets as I have worked hard to get where I am in fish keeping. Thanks for all of your help.

 

[steelhealr]

Hi ehackler...first off, are you sure the testing materials are still good? are you confident about the positive nitrite result? If so, the tank has recycled from something that went on during the transfer. Somehow, either something died or part of the helpful bacteria that convert nitrite to nitrtate was lost.

I'd continue to do water changes and ride it out. We all talk about how external filters can be come nitrate traps. That is because they do the job very well..too well. I wonder if, when the filter died, you lost some of your biogical filtration??? I'm not a big fan of additives...I don't actually think they speed anything up. SH

 

[ehackler]

The test kit is only a few weeks old. It's the Marine Enterprises complete test kit that tests Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, and PH. and I use the Salifert kits for Calcium and alkalinity. I'm pretty confident about the Nitrite results mainly because my Dwarf Lion has not been eating like his normal self for the past few days and my Bicolor Angel has also stopped eating.
I'm not big on additives to my tank either but a friend of mine told me that Nitromax marine is bacteria in a bottle that will reduce Ammonia and Nitrites and help the cycle complete if it in fact has went back into a cycle. Has anyone else used Nitromax before?

Thanks again,

 

[SkiFletch]

Well if your kit is that new, its likely the test is accurate, but I'd take a water sample to my LFS just to be sure... If the test is accurate, it should only be a few days more until the nitrite eaters catch up since the nitrite level is so low. Sounds like your equillibrium is just a little off and that usually doesnt take too long to get back in check. So keep water changing and hope nobody gets too affected by it. Also decrease your feeding a little bit to lower the overall bio load on the tank.

 

[ehackler]

Ok... I changed 15 gallons of water and will wait to test the water again. How often should I do the partial water changes and is 15 gallons enough? It's close to 20% and it's what I usually change on my biweekly changes. Thanks again and any further advice is welcome.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well I usually do 10% per week, but lots ofpeople do things differently