Will Nitrites Eventually Hit 0 On Their Own?

[Rynofasho]

Still cycling, fish in, and my ammonia readings are almost always 0, however I have yet to hit the fabled 0 nitrite number. I do a 25% water change either every day or every other day, depending on how busy I am. Will they hit 0 ever without me changing 100% of the water? Would many changes speed the process? I can't really change more than 35% at once as my tap water is very alkaline (8.5+) however the bogwood in my tank keeps it around 7.6 - 7.8 so I don't really want to change the water chemistry too drastically at once.

Would doing say a 25% change in the morning and then in the evening be useful? Just trying to understand if the tank will process all these nitrites on its own or if I can speed the process.

 

[Aqua Tom]

The answers you seek are here

 

[Geoff-]

yep read the above link for more information. in short, they will but the nitrites phase is a battle as 1ppm ammonia will be converted to 2.7ppm of nitrites. I was having to do daily water changes to keep my levels down too, and I wasn't helped by my tap water having 0.25ppm of nitrites already! not much you can do to speed it up just make sure your replacement water has been dechlorinated.

You'll get there, just be patient and keep up with the water changes. 100% change won't fix it - your fish will keep producing waste which will get converted into nitrites.

If your levels are high then a single larger change is better than many smaller ones, as long as you pay attention to dechlorinating, temperature matching etc so as not to shock your fish.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree, since about 3 times as much nitrite needs to be processed as ammonia, it takes longer to develop all the bacteria needed to do that part of the processing.

You gave us a lot of numbers in the post but not one of the key ones that would help us to analyze your situation, the numbers of days you've been doing the fish-in cycle. Non-mature media added fish-in cycles nearly always take around a month or more.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[roadmaster]

Still cycling, fish in, and my ammonia readings are almost always 0, however I have yet to hit the fabled 0 nitrite number. I do a 25% water change either every day or every other day, depending on how busy I am. Will they hit 0 ever without me changing 100% of the water? Would many changes speed the process? I can't really change more than 35% at once as my tap water is very alkaline (8.5+) however the bogwood in my tank keeps it around 7.6 - 7.8 so I don't really want to change the water chemistry too drastically at once.

Would doing say a 25% change in the morning and then in the evening be useful? Just trying to understand if the tank will process all these nitrites on its own or if I can speed the process.

In my view,much depends on the number of fishes and the volume of water along with the amount of food that is being fed to the fish.
That information will often dictate the frequency of water changes and will reflect as much through test results.
Water changes are not likely to slow or speed the process but reducing feeding and performing water changes will make things a bit easier on the fish.If nitrite levels other than zero are present,fish are affected in negative way.
It is possible to help the process along if you could borrow some filter material from a disease free existing aquarium that has been running with fish for at least six to eight weeks.The longer the donor tank has been running with fish,the better.
Otherwise, water changes perhaps twice daily, and reducing feeding's to once every other day, to once every two days would be less stressful /toxic for the fish.

 

[Rynofasho]

Fish have been in the tank for 4 weeks so I'm sure that I'm getting closer. I did a big water change today (40%) but again I could tell the fish were adversely affected by the water chemistry change. Ive been looking elsewhere on here and noticed that it might help to fill two buckets and leave them overnight so I think I will test that theory out tonite and see what the pH is tomorrow.

 

[BIG BAD BARRY]

Tested the theory a few days ago. Left the water overnight and PH dropped.
Link to post below has details:

http/www.fishforum...217-water-test/

 

[Rynofasho]

Tested the theory a few days ago. Left the water overnight and PH dropped.
Link to post below has details:

http/www.fishforum...217-water-test/

Didn't work for me Still bright, bright purple 16.5 hours later. Guess I'll pick up some bottled water and check the pH on that and give it a shot.

 

[Geoff-]

You've got a few choices:
1) use bottled water if suitable - but this is expensive.
2) Take the bogwood out so your tank pH stays closer to the tap water pH, while the cycle completes. Put the bogwood back once you're doing fewer changes.
3) Leave the bogwood in but let tap water sit overnight with a second piece of bogwood to put in the tap water overnight to try and bring its pH down a bit.

Are you temperature matching the tap water you're adding? Temperature shock would cause a bigger issue than pH??

 

[Rynofasho]

You've got a few choices:
1) use bottled water if suitable - but this is expensive.
2) Take the bogwood out so your tank pH stays closer to the tap water pH, while the cycle completes. Put the bogwood back once you're doing fewer changes.
3) Leave the bogwood in but let tap water sit overnight with a second piece of bogwood to put in the tap water overnight to try and bring its pH down a bit.

Are you temperature matching the tap water you're adding? Temperature shock would cause a bigger issue than pH??

I bought a big 4 gallon jug of water in case I need to do any big changes. I haven't had to yet as all levels are acceptable (enough) for me to do 25% changes daily.

I think taking the bogwood out of the tank would be a mistake since my tapwater is so alkaline, so I think I'm going to go get another big hunk of bogwood like you said and run another experiment. I'm pretty close to cycled now anyhow, so this may end up being a moot point, but I'd rather be prepared in case I need to make a large change.

Thank you.

 

[golfzzin]

Hi, im really new to this so wont be much help, but i had a similer issue

I got my fish around 6 weeks ago after leaving the tank just 3 days and adding some nutrafin cycle

I never had an issue with ammonia and ph stayed steady, nitrites however i just couldnt shift. I was doing anywhere between 50 - 90% water changes every day, sometimes twice, 6 weeks on im finally nirite free

Sometimes though id do a 90% change, test a few hours later and still had bright purple - high nitrites, it really felt like i was doomed and so were my little friends

Its been hard work, especaily working some crazy hours recently but now its well worth it. I can finally enjoy my fish

 

[Aqua Tom]

Hi, im really new to this so wont be much help, but i had a similer issue

I got my fish around 6 weeks ago after leaving the tank just 3 days and adding some nutrafin cycle

I never had an issue with ammonia and ph stayed steady, nitrites however i just couldnt shift. I was doing anywhere between 50 - 90% water changes every day, sometimes twice, 6 weeks on im finally nirite free

Sometimes though id do a 90% change, test a few hours later and still had bright purple - high nitrites, it really felt like i was doomed and so were my little friends

Its been hard work, especaily working some crazy hours recently but now its well worth it. I can finally enjoy my fish

There lies the huge difference, i am currently doing a fishless cycle & have not changed the water since I started 31 days ago. It is so much easier.

 

[golfzzin]

Hi, im really new to this so wont be much help, but i had a similer issue

I got my fish around 6 weeks ago after leaving the tank just 3 days and adding some nutrafin cycle

I never had an issue with ammonia and ph stayed steady, nitrites however i just couldnt shift. I was doing anywhere between 50 - 90% water changes every day, sometimes twice, 6 weeks on im finally nirite free

Sometimes though id do a 90% change, test a few hours later and still had bright purple - high nitrites, it really felt like i was doomed and so were my little friends

Its been hard work, especaily working some crazy hours recently but now its well worth it. I can finally enjoy my fish

There lies the huge difference, i am currently doing a fishless cycle & have not changed the water since I started 31 days ago. It is so much easier.

I was unaware, as many are, of fishless cycling till it was too late. Il be doing it next time but once started i just had to deal with it.

Nice input though

 

[waterdrop]

Of course the nice thing is that if you stay active in the hobby and have a cycled tank then you can "seed" a new tank's new filter with mature media and you can "clean" your old filter in the new tank and often the new filter will cycle in about a week. So it's only the very first time that one theoretically might need to do a fishless cycle. Having learned on one though is a really valuable skill in that you can "qualify" your new filters and have a true understanding of how they are performing and an appreciation of the quickness of a mature media clone.

Member golfzzin makes a good point that it's not uncommon for a fish-in cycle to drag on out to 6 weeks, not uncommon at all.

~~waterdrop~~