Ammonia in 10gal, small BGK and eel.
- Thread starter Dez
- Start date
Sounds like the water changes are working, and regarding your previous post, I mentioned and I think somebody else did that running carbon full time isnt usually needed. If you need carbon full time youre probably underfiltered. At any rate I would remove the carbon make room for more bio media or mechanical media down the road. I'd hold on to the zeolite if you need it for some reason but for now I would just keep up with the water changes as you have been.
Glad to hear it. Sounds like youre going to be fine. If anything changes or if you just have questions let us know
Sent from the mars rover
Sent from the mars rover
x2. You want yout nitrites to stay under 1 ppm and your ammonia under 4ppm. any higher and those water perameters will start doing damage to your fish and your bacteria colony ( excessive ammonia will kill off a cycle, and cause a recycle. and nitrites are just flat poisonouse to your fish.)
In about 5 days imo you should skip a day of water changes and check your peremeters... if you get 0 nitrites and ammonia slowly start backing off your water changes until you get 20ppm or more nitrates... that will tell you how often ultimately you need to change water, and remember as your fish grow or tankmates are added ect.. you'll want to test to keep your nitrates 20ppm or less by the next water change.
I have some tanks that I do 20% every 2-3 days and others i only do once a week or so... all depends on the bio-load of the individual tank.
And if you haven't i would do a search on the nitrogen cycle and really grasp filtration and water chemistry applying to fishkeeping. Good water and husbandry practices will 99% of the time fix a problem, or avoid one. Usually the root to any problem, or the way to solve one.
Just a little update. Things have been going good so far, BKG is still eating well and I feed him in portions a couple times a day. Slowed down on the water changes, making them every 2-3 days instead of every day, but I seem to be hovering around the 1.0ppm mark with the ammonia. Is there anything additional I should try, or by this point do I simply let the bacteria do its work over time and continue with the water changes?
Glad to hear things are improving. Keep up the water changes like you are for now since it sounds like your ammonia has gone down so its working. Since your water changes are more spread out it will take some time for the bacteria to adjust to the new regiment. If the ammonia starts to drop again, you can spread out the water changes a little more. If the ammonia plateaus and doesnt continue to go down after another week or so then you may want to look into adding some more bio media.
redearsunfish