Is My Water Exchanging System Hurting Cycle?

[motoracer110]

I have a 180 gallon that has been cycling for about 5 weeks (fishless just adding small amount of fish food). I just put some cheap tester fish in there 2 days ago and they didnt make it. My Nitrates are at 20ppm and Nitrite is at 1ppm. I am running a water exchanging system doing about 1 drop of tap water per second going into my tank. do you think that is hurting my system or do i need to run a chlorine filter from the tap? I dont know if that was a small enough amount of tap water to mess things up?

 

[rolandk10]

Let's eliminate a few possibilities. Your nitrite is not high enough to massacre any fish. Neither is your nitriate. Also, with your nitrates up to 20ppm, that tells me your cycle is complete.

Check your ammonia. If it's too high, it can be deadly. With your nitrites at 1 and your nitrates at 20, I expect your ammonia is 0. Confirm that.

What is the temperature of your tank? What fish did you put in? If your tank is at 80ish, it could feasably kill feeder goldfish or rosies. They keep the tanks at 70ish at the lfs. I've put two dozen feeders in my tank before to end up with half of them dead by the next day. (in a breeder basket to isolate them). The tank was at 81.

The chlorine could be the culprate. It's basically just bleach. It's a small amount but it's still toxic to fish. I would add a filter to mine even if the fish didn't die.

Get some Seachem Prime. Turn off the drip. Add 4 capfuls of Prime and put some more test fish in there. That should neutralize any tap water issues. See if that works. If so, I'd blame the chlorine.

 

[pshtex]

4 cap fulls would neutralize 200 gals worth

 

[rolandk10]

You can go up to 5x over the recommend dose according to the bottle. But when you treat, you either treat the water before you put it in or treat enough for the whole tank if it's already in it. So if you have a 150 gallon tank and change 50 gallons, you are supposed to put 150 gallons worth of treatment in...According to the bottle

 

[motoracer110]

awesome rolandk10 thank you for the info. I just sat here for a while trying to figure out what is going on and i think i found the culperate. Its the driftwood. I purchased it online as atlantic driftwood hardwood and i did a 2 week soak but i bet its leaching toxins into the water...... Im going to take it out and do some major water changes and see if that does it because everything else doesn't make sense. keeping my fingers crossed

 

[PostalPenguin]

If your tap water is treated with chlorine, 1 drop a second may be fine since chlorine evaporates easily. If it is treated with chloramine, which doesn't readily evaporate, that could also be the culprit.

 

[motoracer110]

If your tap water is treated with chlorine, 1 drop a second may be fine since chlorine evaporates easily. If it is treated with chloramine, which doesn't readily evaporate, that could also be the culprit.

I totally overlooked that. I called my water treatment facility and they say that they do add Chloramine so i will be getting a filter in my line as well. I currently have another tester fish in there and it seems to be doing fine with my drift wood out of the aquarium so we will see and in the meantime ill be ordering a chloramine filter.

 

[CyberPunk]

Really need to know your ammonia, PH and info on your filtration setup to give a better recommendation. Nitrates at 20ppm and nitrites at 1 shows you have for sure started a cycle however. As for the driftwood, its usealy fine, I would check your PH as driftwood can casue your water to become acidic some times, but usealy natural driftwood is beneficial to a system (Unless they treated it with something like to kill bugs!).