whats happened to my water

[littlehattie]

ok so my new trigon 350 is up and running, the waters perfect and we've moved a few of our fish from the other tank in to it

the problem is with the old tank, mums had it going for two years with no problem but suddenly the waters gone wierd

yesterday the nitrite was up to 25, and the nitrate up to 40

we did a 20% water change and today the nitrites the same but the nitrate has gone up to 80!!

is this realy bad?

we've got

2 upside down cats
1 ghost knife fish
4 corys
2 flying foxes
4 penguins
and some guppies and neons

its a 40 litre

are my fish in danger?
should i move some to the new tank?

hattie (9 1/2)

 

[canarsie11]

Did you test your source water?

 

[littlehattie]

no but i'll do that now

 

[littlehattie]

ok

tested the tap water

no nitrites
5 nitrate

does that mean anything

 

[appleblossom]

its very strange that your nitrates should go up so much after a water change with water that has only a nitrate reading of 5....

firstly the nitrites are a sign that your tank is re-cycling. can you test the ammonia? if you have ammonia present then your tank is having a mini-cycle and you will need to keep up the water changes to keep your fish alive.

have you done anything recently that could have harmed the bacteria in the filter??

for the nitrates all i can suggest is more water changes and keep monitoring the levels to see if they come back down (they should)

are there any dead bodies, decomposing plants or left over food that could have got your water all messed up??

good luck!

 

[clutterydrawer]

Hello again Hattie

I think I remember you saying that you took one of the filters off the old tank to set up the new tank? If so, this may have caused the nitrite spike, as some of the bacteria needed to keep the tank running smoothly had been removed. I'm not 100% sure of this, it's just a suggestion.

Either way, to give your fish the best chance you need to test the water every day and do enough water changes to keep ammonia and nitrIte as low as possible. I wish you the best of luck .