Hi all,
We have a 210 gallon tank that we have two large (18") Pacus in. Since rescuing the fish a couple months ago, we've battled a Nitrate spike with water changes. At that time, nitrite level was zero, as was ammonia. Nitrate was initially around 200 ppm.
The good news is that the Nitrate is down to around 15 ppm. The bad news is that the Nitrite is up to around 1.0 ppm. Ammonia is somewhere between 0 and 0.25 ppm.
In our zeal to battle Nitrates, we've done about 20-40% water changes about every other day for several weeks. We also switched from two power filters rated for 70 gallons each (that's another story...we sized originally for a 125 tank but it cracked so we upgraded to the 210) to a Marineland C360 and a SunSun 530 gph unit, the Marineland 2 weeks ago and the SunSun 4 days ago.
We think that in our zeal to get rid of Nitrates, we may have lost our biological filter. We shouldn't have ever had new tank syndrome as when we brought the adopted fish home, we also brought about 60 gallons of their water and a couple of sponge filters full of bacteria with us, along with their gravel.
So far the fish seem ok, but we certainly want to get rid of this issue asap. What do you think? Should we add some beneficial bacteria in the form of a purchased product? (We live in the same town as Dr's Foster And Smith's world headquarters, so the world is our oyster as far as products go--if they have it, we can run out to their warehouse and pick it up in < 5 miinutes) Do you think our hunch that we eliminated too much good with the bad in fighting the nitrAte problem induced the nitrIte problem? Or do you have another theory?
Please help. Thanks in advance.
Mike
We have a 210 gallon tank that we have two large (18") Pacus in. Since rescuing the fish a couple months ago, we've battled a Nitrate spike with water changes. At that time, nitrite level was zero, as was ammonia. Nitrate was initially around 200 ppm.
The good news is that the Nitrate is down to around 15 ppm. The bad news is that the Nitrite is up to around 1.0 ppm. Ammonia is somewhere between 0 and 0.25 ppm.
In our zeal to battle Nitrates, we've done about 20-40% water changes about every other day for several weeks. We also switched from two power filters rated for 70 gallons each (that's another story...we sized originally for a 125 tank but it cracked so we upgraded to the 210) to a Marineland C360 and a SunSun 530 gph unit, the Marineland 2 weeks ago and the SunSun 4 days ago.
We think that in our zeal to get rid of Nitrates, we may have lost our biological filter. We shouldn't have ever had new tank syndrome as when we brought the adopted fish home, we also brought about 60 gallons of their water and a couple of sponge filters full of bacteria with us, along with their gravel.
So far the fish seem ok, but we certainly want to get rid of this issue asap. What do you think? Should we add some beneficial bacteria in the form of a purchased product? (We live in the same town as Dr's Foster And Smith's world headquarters, so the world is our oyster as far as products go--if they have it, we can run out to their warehouse and pick it up in < 5 miinutes) Do you think our hunch that we eliminated too much good with the bad in fighting the nitrAte problem induced the nitrIte problem? Or do you have another theory?
Please help. Thanks in advance.
Mike
had to cycle all over again. You can reduced feeding to slow down the amount of ammonia into the water. But something tells me you know how to deal with NTS 