Your advice seems reasonable to me. I'll follow it. At this point I'll do my best to maintain the correct levels. One thing I'm a little confused on, am I correct to understand the nitrite levels should rise a bit? As in it's a response to the beneficial bacteria? I have gotten some stability on Amazon and it should arrive by Saturday. Somebody (you?) said to do 75% water changes twice a week so I will do that and see what happens.
What do you think I might be dealing with here?
- Thread starter SCM_2123
- Start date
Hello; It gets confusing. The two toxins which BB take care of are Ammonia & nitrite. Different types of BB to be sure. ( likely there are many strains of BB ). The ordinary way it works is if tank conditions are suitable for one type of BB it is also suitable for the other. An answer to your question may depend on things not yet known.
Let me side track for a moment. The test strips in your pictures are not in favor with some members. Those members tend to trust the master test kits a bit more. I do not have a lot to say about this other than to look at the results as more of general indicators and not exactly precise.
My take is whatever happened to one type of BB very likely happened to the other type. The following expectation being it would be reasonable to expect both ammonia & nitrite to show up if such is the case.
Of the trio of toxins most commonly tested for the only one which is tolerated in tanks is nitrate. depending on who you follow 20 to 40 ppm are considered acceptable. One way I take the goal to be is to have zero for ammonia & nitrite and do a WC if the nitrates get above 20-40 ppm. Of course some run tanks at much higher levels of nitrate. You may want to read threads about hole in the head disease sometime, most of the time blamed on poor water conditions.
While I am rambling on let me add a bit about evaporation and WC. Because our tanks mostly run at higher temperatures and also because we want lots of aeriation in the water, evaporation happens. A WC needs to be a volume of water some multiple greater than the rate of evaporation. A simple way to gauge is to look at the water levels. If the level is down two inches since the last WC then the next WC needs to be at least 4 inches or more. When water evaporates the minerals, salts, growth inhibitors excreted by the fish and other such things remain and become more concentrated.
Hello; keep up with the WC for a couple of weeks and let us hope the fish recover. In the mean time try to find a BB starter culture. (I do not quite understand why fish shops do not offer this. Must be a reason)
Hello; I have read about stability but do not have experience with it.
Perhaps my previous comment was unclear, I did not say to never change filter media, I said don't change all the media at once. And rinsing in old tank water is something you can do on a more frequent basis than replacing. For example I had a 60 gallon tank with a HOB, every 5 days or do I would do a 30-40% water change, and take the main poop filter and slosh it around in a bucket of the water I was removing from the tank, and put the filter media back, this is because it was dechlorinated already rather than using water from the tap that would kill off any BB in it, this is a common practice, if you have a ready source of dechlorinated water to rinse the filter in, then there's no need to do this in old tank water. And you do what you want with your underwear. Then every 6 weeks or 2 months I would throw away the main filter cartridge and replace with a new one. I never replaced the other media in the filter, some ceramic media and a sponge just before it. These only got rinsed in water change water every month or so. Removing the poo from the first filter every few days kept the tank cleaner than waiting until it was time to throw it away and replace it.
Back to this particular tank, any ammonia reading is bad for the fish, and sometimes it's hard to pinpoint why it happened, but if the tanks been running for over a year, it should have been cycled by this point, so something happened to change that. As mentioned before by skjl47 it could have been meds, it could have been adding too many fish too fast, it could have been filter maintenance, who really knows, but you need to reestablish healthy levels of bb. Without magic bottles, the ammonia eating bb establish first and the ammonia levels decrease over time, a few days to a couple weeks, as the colony growsand processes the ammonia, they produce nitrite, so you would start seeing nitrite readings, and the second type of bb that eat nitrite will start colonizing and over time the nitrite readings will peak and decrease as the colony balances to the available foor source, and they produce nitrate. Once you styart seeing nitrate then you have both colonies started working, and over time if the tank population is stable and feedings are regular etc, they will balance to consume and process the ammonia and nitrite so effectively it reads 0 on your tests and youll only see nitrate. This is an established mature cycle. With a healthy mature cycle, if you add a lot of fish, or throw away 1/2 your filter media, you may see a blip of ammonia or nitrite, but it would be gone in a day, there's plenty of healthy bb to multiply quickly.
I'm not familiar enough with all the bottles available to tell you how they affect this process. some are starter bacteria that kickstart the process, others I believe react with the ammonia or nitrite making them less toxic or nuetralizing them to protect your fish, but don't boost your bb colony in any way. I would keep doing water changes every 2-3 days to reduce the amount of ammonia and nitrite in the water until the cycle is balanced. feed very lightly during this process, remove any uneaten food. Don't add any fish until it's cycled again. check your parameters on your qt tank as well, if thats reading 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite then it may be cycled and you could take a sponge from the filter, or some decor or something to put in the main tank and boost the cycle, if you've qtd long enough to be comfortable the fish aren't harboring any parasites or disease.
Back to this particular tank, any ammonia reading is bad for the fish, and sometimes it's hard to pinpoint why it happened, but if the tanks been running for over a year, it should have been cycled by this point, so something happened to change that. As mentioned before by skjl47 it could have been meds, it could have been adding too many fish too fast, it could have been filter maintenance, who really knows, but you need to reestablish healthy levels of bb. Without magic bottles, the ammonia eating bb establish first and the ammonia levels decrease over time, a few days to a couple weeks, as the colony growsand processes the ammonia, they produce nitrite, so you would start seeing nitrite readings, and the second type of bb that eat nitrite will start colonizing and over time the nitrite readings will peak and decrease as the colony balances to the available foor source, and they produce nitrate. Once you styart seeing nitrate then you have both colonies started working, and over time if the tank population is stable and feedings are regular etc, they will balance to consume and process the ammonia and nitrite so effectively it reads 0 on your tests and youll only see nitrate. This is an established mature cycle. With a healthy mature cycle, if you add a lot of fish, or throw away 1/2 your filter media, you may see a blip of ammonia or nitrite, but it would be gone in a day, there's plenty of healthy bb to multiply quickly.
I'm not familiar enough with all the bottles available to tell you how they affect this process. some are starter bacteria that kickstart the process, others I believe react with the ammonia or nitrite making them less toxic or nuetralizing them to protect your fish, but don't boost your bb colony in any way. I would keep doing water changes every 2-3 days to reduce the amount of ammonia and nitrite in the water until the cycle is balanced. feed very lightly during this process, remove any uneaten food. Don't add any fish until it's cycled again. check your parameters on your qt tank as well, if thats reading 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite then it may be cycled and you could take a sponge from the filter, or some decor or something to put in the main tank and boost the cycle, if you've qtd long enough to be comfortable the fish aren't harboring any parasites or disease.
I wasn't as good about rinsing the filter media before so that could be part of the problem. What do you mean by underwear? The ammonia is down to zero, should I still do the biweekly water changes? If so how much? What should the nitrate readings be in a cycled, healthy tank? I was wondering about taking decor from the quarantine tank. I'll have to check the parameters on that. It hasn't been running long. Maybe a month or six weeks tops.
Hello; The underwear remark was a response to a post I made so not so much a part of the actual discussion.
A fully mature/cycled tank will have Zero ammonia & nitrite with some amount of nitrate. A nitrate reading is a clue that you have some BB is my take.
That your water is reading zero ammonia is good news, but the reason is not yet clear. May be due to the extra WC routine or may be due to the BB coming around to decent levels. Again, look for a nitrate reading.
The qt tank may be cycled if the water reads 0 ammonia: 0 nitrite & some number of nitrates. If so then yes move some decor assuming you are willing to risk whatever disease you set up the QT tank about.
Considering the pictures of your fish from just a few days ago I would continue to do big WC every couple of days or whatever you can stand. At this point you have not posted 0 ammonia: 0 nitrite & some number of nitrates so I am thinking it is the WC which are helping. It is easy for me to suggest 60to 75% WC every other day as i am not the one doing such. You may be beyond the second WC already as I may have lost count. I do not know how much WC is needed just that more is going to be better.
I am still curious about the tap water readings if you decide to test it.
My ammonia and nitrate and nitrites are at 0 (or were when I last tested). I posted a picture. I just set up a quarantine tank to observe before I put any new fish in the main tank. Currently there are eight white skirt tetras in it.
Hello; Assuming you are doing the tests correctly and the test kit chemicals are good then the lack of nitrates would appear to be a clue. The other scenario might be the recent WC have diluted these enough to get the zero readings.
I have been watching this thread, from the get go, because of previous threads,
and you have been given some great advive, but just to be clear
You do not have ich, below is ich, and ich is simple, 3 lbs of salt per 100 gals (a salinity of 3 ppt), and it is gone, unless you under dose.
What your fish have are bacterial infections or fungal infections caused by either "not" creating a proper cycle at the get go, when the tank was set up,
or destroying the cycle with meds and/or chemicals.
But bacterial infections are harder to deal with.
It sounds like your tank is a varitable soup of gels, and zymes, with all the crapp that been added., and may be collapsing under the chemical strain.
If the tank had been set up and cycled properly, that stuff is not needed (just dechlor to detoxify city water disinfectabnts).
If you had done a proper at least 3 month QT maybe you could have avoided trouble, but sometimes fish can be asymtomatic carriers or disease.
And it sounds like a it wasn't used at 1st, and an infective agent gas been allowed in, and the fallot began.
This is why an extensive QT is needed, in that way if an enfective agent has been added, you catch it in QT, and deal with it before there is need to euthanise the entire fish and plant populatiion.
A friend who runs a public aquarium at a zoo QTs all fish for at least 6 months, before adding them to a display tank.
And later......water change, water change water change....
in my tanks, I try to do a 30 to 40% every other day as a general rule, because once cycled I want nitrates to be in the undetectable range.
When cycling a tank at 1st, we test for Nitrate to indicate if ammonia and nitrie are properly detoxified.
After a cycle is complet that's when the regular water changes begin
because water changes are the only successful way of removing nitrate.
And excessive nitrate is often the cause of certain disease.
Here is an API test if waters where healthy fish live in nature.
To create the same environment in my tanks, I do enough water changes to mimic that same test in my tanks.
I am at my wit's end. I have dealt with issues since late April. I have tried ich cures, I have tried Kanaplex, and I have tried AAP Yellow Powder- Premium Nitrofurazone. It seems like things clear up and then suddenly I have what looks like another infection. What do you think this might be here? It's hard to tell but the serpae's eye is bulging a bit. I changed the water on Thursday. I've been trying like hell to get the ammonia lower but have not succeeded.
You do not have ich, below is ich, and ich is simple, 3 lbs of salt per 100 gals (a salinity of 3 ppt), and it is gone, unless you under dose.
What your fish have are bacterial infections or fungal infections caused by either "not" creating a proper cycle at the get go, when the tank was set up,
or destroying the cycle with meds and/or chemicals.
But bacterial infections are harder to deal with.
It sounds like your tank is a varitable soup of gels, and zymes, with all the crapp that been added., and may be collapsing under the chemical strain.
If the tank had been set up and cycled properly, that stuff is not needed (just dechlor to detoxify city water disinfectabnts).
If you had done a proper at least 3 month QT maybe you could have avoided trouble, but sometimes fish can be asymtomatic carriers or disease.
And it sounds like a it wasn't used at 1st, and an infective agent gas been allowed in, and the fallot began.
This is why an extensive QT is needed, in that way if an enfective agent has been added, you catch it in QT, and deal with it before there is need to euthanise the entire fish and plant populatiion.
A friend who runs a public aquarium at a zoo QTs all fish for at least 6 months, before adding them to a display tank.
And later......water change, water change water change....
in my tanks, I try to do a 30 to 40% every other day as a general rule, because once cycled I want nitrates to be in the undetectable range.
When cycling a tank at 1st, we test for Nitrate to indicate if ammonia and nitrie are properly detoxified.
After a cycle is complet that's when the regular water changes begin
because water changes are the only successful way of removing nitrate.
And excessive nitrate is often the cause of certain disease.
Here is an API test if waters where healthy fish live in nature.
To create the same environment in my tanks, I do enough water changes to mimic that same test in my tanks.
