water changes to keep your ammonia under 4ppm... if its a cycled tank... more bio is needed. Nitrites are the scary one ime.... over 1ppm and not much can survive it ime.
ammonia on the rise destroying fish
- Thread starter dudefish82
- Start date
well tank looks extremely clear the 5,000 gallon pond will be coming up next year. until that i will put arapaima in 55 gallon and when about 8 inches i will put it in my 9 x 4 pond until big pond is build
hey guys will pond water introduce bacteria since my pond has fish and they have never died. and it is cycled
1) very few if any bacteria float in the water. They attach to a surface and the colony propagates to adjacent surfaces.
2) you haven't posted any readings (ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/ph) from your tank. You can't 'see' these things and so you can't see that it's 'clear.' Fish behavior is not a good tool because species have different tolerances to toxic substances. Are you taking readings?
3) you said the water 'looks clear now.' Was it cloudy?
4) how do you know the tank was cycled? When were the last readings normal (ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates below 80)?
2) you haven't posted any readings (ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/ph) from your tank. You can't 'see' these things and so you can't see that it's 'clear.' Fish behavior is not a good tool because species have different tolerances to toxic substances. Are you taking readings?
3) you said the water 'looks clear now.' Was it cloudy?
4) how do you know the tank was cycled? When were the last readings normal (ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates below 80)?
Pond water won't add much, get some bacteria in a bottle to try and help the cycle, cut back on the stock if possible, cut down on feeding and use prime to try and detoxify it... Did you add all the fish at once? And had you cycled the tank at all with either ammonia or feeders before that?
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hey there is two fish in aquarium. i dont have a test kit. the water looks clear because the sponge filter is working . i just added a driftwood from my pond ibet there at least a little bacteria in it
Clear water means absolutely nothing. You definitely need a test kit.
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If you get serious about cycling the tank, get it's pH to 7, KH to at least 120, do a full clean on your filter(right now it's probably already halfway clogged from clearing up your water), and then dump in a bunch of bottles of the bacteria starter crap. I've cycled tanks literally overnight doing this on several occasions. Your canister filter probably already has bio media and you're right driftwood is good habitat too, although bacteria are very fragile, if the temperature or the pH was off by much between the pond and your tank any existing bacteria in it are probably dead.
While it's cycling(you will be able to tell when it's cycled because you will have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and nitrates will start rising) you need to keep testing the KH because the bacteria eat the KH when they eat the ammonia and nitrites. You can raise KH only with potassium carbonate, and you can raise pH and KH at the same time with calcium carbonate. Be very careful and use online calculators if you use either of these, ESPECIALLY calcium carbonate. Do not raise your pH by more than .4 in a 24-hour period. If you use either, stir them into a big pitcher of tank water and pour some in every hour over at least 12 hours to get it all into the tank. If KH drops below about 80, your pH will start to drop fast and your bacteria will stop performing well, both because they need KH to eat ammonia/nitrite, and also because they don't like low pH. By the time pH hits 6 you basically may as well not have any bacteria in there, because they are doing very little or nothing.
You also want to have 2 canister filters if you are serious about KEEPING it cycled. Then you can clean one at a time on a cycle, so the other one still has your bacteria to keep the tank cycled and repopulate the recently cleaned one. If they start clogging up and need cleaning every 2 months, then you stagger the months, if they only last 1 month then you do one or the other every 2 weeks, etc...
While it's cycling(you will be able to tell when it's cycled because you will have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, and nitrates will start rising) you need to keep testing the KH because the bacteria eat the KH when they eat the ammonia and nitrites. You can raise KH only with potassium carbonate, and you can raise pH and KH at the same time with calcium carbonate. Be very careful and use online calculators if you use either of these, ESPECIALLY calcium carbonate. Do not raise your pH by more than .4 in a 24-hour period. If you use either, stir them into a big pitcher of tank water and pour some in every hour over at least 12 hours to get it all into the tank. If KH drops below about 80, your pH will start to drop fast and your bacteria will stop performing well, both because they need KH to eat ammonia/nitrite, and also because they don't like low pH. By the time pH hits 6 you basically may as well not have any bacteria in there, because they are doing very little or nothing.
You also want to have 2 canister filters if you are serious about KEEPING it cycled. Then you can clean one at a time on a cycle, so the other one still has your bacteria to keep the tank cycled and repopulate the recently cleaned one. If they start clogging up and need cleaning every 2 months, then you stagger the months, if they only last 1 month then you do one or the other every 2 weeks, etc...
I edited that above post a bunch, just bumping the thread cause you're actually online right now and don't know to refresh.
yea today i added a sponge filter and put some old filter media from my pond pump to my canister filter
