Ten Gallon New Setup

[4seasons]

Found something this morning that made me rethink what is going on in my tank. A few of the live plants didn't do so well in the move and have several dieing leafs and a couple of the whole plants have died. I think what was happening for the last few days was dieing plants producing ammonia and the ammonia eating bacteria keeping up with increase of ammonia but not having enough nitrite eating bacteria to handle the increase. I think that is where my nitrite spike is coming from. I removed the dieing plants and some of the dead leaves so maybe there wont be as much ammonia being made in the tank and will give those nitrite bacteria a chance to catch up.

 

[OldMan47]

Dead leaves will add to the biological load in your tank. That means that the dead plant looks just like more fish to your filter. If you remove any dead plants you can remove that source of nitrogen.