You have way too many fish in your tank. Even with additional filtration, it will be hard to maintain good water quality with that number of fish unless you do large daily water changes. Forget about the live bacteria stuff. To lower nitrates, do a water change. Bio-wheels work well to provide surface area and oxygenated water to the beneficial bacteria. Additional filtration will help reduce the ammonia and nitrites in your tank, but will produce more nitrates.
How to lower nitrates and ammonia
- Thread starter asaid
- Start date
Heavily stocked tank can quickly lead to old tank syndrome. Lots of bio activity creates acids which lowers the pH. At increasingly lower pH bacteria does not survive, so you see a rise in ammonia. Luckily at very low pH ammonia is much less toxic. Best to confirm this diagnosis by doing a pH check first, then let us know.
You need to look up the nitrogen cycle. Your stock is heavy as well, which does explain the high nitrate(from previously cycled) and the high ammonia(tank cycling again). As for a filter with bio wheel, you don't even need to clean it. Just toss in tank water so it doesn't dry out when cleaning the filter. I would cut down your stock and do more frequent water changed until you stop seeing ammonia. You also need more bio and filtration with that stock.
ok, thanks everybody. i really appreciate it!! i will try all of your suggestions and hopefully it will go down. if anybody has any more tips i would appreciate it.
thanks again
thanks again
yikes.......
1) make sure the media in your filters is mostly if not all biomedia -- then add more filters....
2) don't feed your fish for 2-3 days, then maybe once every other day - your filtration will not catch up with the load in that tank
3) after 5-7 days of that - do a 30-40% water change, and please...don't touch the filter media...
rinse and repeat for another week......
once the parameters stabilize....feed once a day, small portions...and hopefully by this time - you will have added another filter....
1) make sure the media in your filters is mostly if not all biomedia -- then add more filters....
2) don't feed your fish for 2-3 days, then maybe once every other day - your filtration will not catch up with the load in that tank
3) after 5-7 days of that - do a 30-40% water change, and please...don't touch the filter media...
rinse and repeat for another week......
once the parameters stabilize....feed once a day, small portions...and hopefully by this time - you will have added another filter....
My tap water ph is 7.6. i am using a liquid tester for all of them. i switched to a h.o.t. magnum filter but without the bio wheel. i couldnt find one. what do u guys mean by all the filter media is mostly bio media?
