Very High Niterate And Niterites

[AlexHaden]

Hi,

a few weeks back we bought some new fish and added them to tank that was working well. They must have brought whitespot with them, as in a week all the fish had whitespot. We treated the tank, lost one fish but all the others recovered and no whitespots left.

Now on to the emergency bit

We are getting readings of VERY high Nitrate and Nitrite - but 0 ammonia - we changed the nitrate removal sponge after a few days incase it was that - and keep adding the bacteria stuff as the medicine probably killed them all off.

Now almost a week later - the levels are still the same - we are doing a water change everyday at the moment to try to keep the fish alive - is there something we are doing wrong?

Why dont the levels seem to be settling down?

Readings over the past few days have all been the same -

NH3 - 0
NO3 - 100 to 110
NO2 - 1.6

Can you anyone help sav our fishies - as i know that prolonged exposure to this kind of high levels will hurt the fish....

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what i suspect is that the meds killed off some of your nitrifying bacteria, then removing the nitrate removal sponge (which will have also held a large part of your bacteria) has killed off even more and the filter has started cycling to catch up.

do you have any ammonia removing devices/products in there at the moment? if not then the lack of ammonia is a good sign that some bacteria still remain and that it shouldn't take too long to get things under control.

i would do a big 90% water change to get that nitrate down, then do daily 20% water changes every day afterwards until your levels stabilise.