Pesky Nitrites

[waterdrop]

Whenever you observe your nitrites going down a bit you've had a glimpse of your N-Bacs at work. They are the slower thing at reproducing themselves that we have to wait for in the process.

~~waterdrop~~
edit: ps. ...but think of how patient our wives have to be at 9 months!!

 

[SlyT]

lol true, however my wife wants the fish ASAP too!

my nitrites were at 4ppm, 12 hours later at 5ppm with ammonia having gone to 0ppm from 4ppm,

what amount of nitrites were therefore processed?

 

[mayurkirti]

Sorry if it looks like I am hijacking your thread SlyT, but I am only trying to get your opinion on my situation.
I have a 10G tank. I am cycling it with 2 guppies. Its been a month now. The ammonia dropped to 0 in just one week, but I am now seeing high nitrite levels. I have been doing water changes to bring down nitrites with no luck. I would usually do 40% water change. I did 60% water change yesterday and tested nitrites immediately after which tested 5ppm. I feel like its taking too long (not as long as it did for you though Am I doing something wrong?

My tap water PH is 8ppm. I am not treating the water for PH yet.

Thanks.

 

[Geoff1991]

Hi SlyT

Glad to see the water changes finally had an effect big enough to give you a readable amount of nitrite. Did you make a DIY python then?

Seems like your back on track, just keep up the testing and be on the look out of pH crashes which could stall your cycle if you have one.

I started having them after my nitrites started being processed quickly and my cycles been stalled 3 times... Also slowed yesterday when my filter got clogged...

mayurkirti, youre doing a fish-in cycle thats a bit different to SlyT's fishless cycle.

You need to do enough water changes to keep your ammonia and nitrite as close to zero as possible. Any higher than 0.25 and your fish start to suffer.

Youre in for a long haul and you could be doing 50% water changes or more 3 times a day.

Have you considered re homing your fish and going fishless?

 

[OldMan47]

You processed a good deal of nitrites if you only have a minor rise after moving that much ammonia. Don't forget that you get about 2 ppm of nitrite produced for each ppm of ammonia removed. You brought in 7 or 8 ppm of new nitrites and only saw 1 ppm with your test. The rest had to go somewhere.

For Mayurkirti, quit messing about with small water changes. If you have a 5 ppm reading of nitrites with a liquid test kit, do 3 of the 75% water changes separated by an hour each and test and see how you are doing. I would be surprised if you are not already losing fish at that ridiculous level. The fish that are swimming around looking like they can't get enough air and that are very lethargic will perk up a lot after those water changes get your nitrites down to around .08 ppm. This assumes that your nitrite is only at 5 ppm. My nitrite kit only goes up to 5 ppm so a 5 ppm reading could really be 25.

 

[mayurkirti]

mayurkirti, youre doing a fish-in cycle thats a bit different to SlyT's fishless cycle.

You need to do enough water changes to keep your ammonia and nitrite as close to zero as possible. Any higher than 0.25 and your fish start to suffer.

Youre in for a long haul and you could be doing 50% water changes or more 3 times a day.

Have you considered re homing your fish and going fishless?

Unfortunately I dont have the option of re homing my fish. I can do water changes as much as possible if it seems like nitrite is being produced too quickly for the bacteria (if there are any) to process. What is perplexing is that I dont understand where I am getting such high amount of ammonia from. The substrate and water are very clean, I have a outside filter, and its a 10 gallon tank with only 2 guppies. I am barely feeding them. I feed them 2 crushed flakes once or twice a day.

On a side note, is it suggested to use salt to alleviate the nitrite problem when doing fish-in cycling? I read somewhere that it will temporarily make nitrites less toxic to the fish.

Thanks for replying!

 

[OldMan47]

Nitrites are interfering with the ability of the fish to get oxygen through their gills. Ordinary salt will help them survive that effect but not nearly as much as getting the nitrite levels down. Your choice is to try to dose some salt and maintain a constant concentration while doing some water changes anyway or to do a few big water changes and get the nitrites under control. I think it is obvious what I think the best course would be. I never mentioned salt in my first post because I find that approach not very useful. The only time I would be tempted to try it is if I found a nitrite spike in the morning before going to work and had no time for a water change. Since a water change, even a big one on a 29 gallon, can be done in under 30 minutes using buckets, there is seldom an excuse for using salt instead.

 

[SlyT]

Cheers Gents,

Dont worry about jumping in on this thread mayurkirti, its fine

Yep the Python I made myself, 30m of B&Q garden hose and a range of hose attatchment bits. As I mentioned earlier, there is nowhere neat enough pressure to do a gravel clean with it, but enough so that the tank will completley empty in about an hour. It also means I can add slightly warmer water to the tank, as the outside hose was very very cold.

Redosed ammonia back at my normal time - little less than 24hrs, but this is only to get me back to my scheduled time as the tank work yesterday took a little longer than expected.

SlyT

 

[Geoff1991]

Worth their weight in gold arent they?

I run mine downstairs so i get enough pressure from gravity alone (even without running the tap) to gravel vac...

Way better than buckets...

 

[SlyT]

Nitrites high again / still - estimate 25ppm

WC again?

 

[Geoff1991]

I would leave it a few days before doing a water change.

 

[bagu]

I would leave it a few days before doing a water change.

i agree, hold it out for a while!

if not, do a water change...