We did a 30% water change on our 120g predator tank two days ago. We have several pieces of large malaysian driftwood, each had quite the large buildup of purple/brown-ish algae growing on it. It was kind of unsightly, so we scrubbed each piece really well with water and a brush, and put them back. Usually our BGK loves to hide in the driftwood, and you never see him, except for at night. Until yesterday.
Ever since the water change, his skin has been noticeably lighter, and he's been swimming straight up and down (head up), hovering just below the service, right next to the filter in plain sight. He's been doing that for two days straight now. We tested the water because his behavior was really unusual, and it turns out we had a huge nitrite spike - I'm assuming because we were dumb and scrubbed off all that algae, disrupting the bacteria cycle. The driftwood is the only thing we scrubbed clean - all the filter media was left as is. Everything in our tank reads okay except for nitrite, it's currently reading about 10, maybe even 11 or 12. Ph was at 6.8~7.0, which is normal, alkalinity was ideal, nitrates were fine... etc.
Yesterday we added some stress coat, and it doesn't seem like it's done anything. Today, we did a 60g (50%) water change, and the levels still have not gone down. We haven't fed them for two days, and now we're going to leave the lights off for a couple days as well to try and ease stress. Do we just continue to do daily 50% water changes until the nitrites go back down, or is there something else we should be doing? This is a well established tank, been up for almost 2 years now and the levels have always been spot on and health, so I'm really concerned about our fish. Any advice?
Thanks!
Ever since the water change, his skin has been noticeably lighter, and he's been swimming straight up and down (head up), hovering just below the service, right next to the filter in plain sight. He's been doing that for two days straight now. We tested the water because his behavior was really unusual, and it turns out we had a huge nitrite spike - I'm assuming because we were dumb and scrubbed off all that algae, disrupting the bacteria cycle. The driftwood is the only thing we scrubbed clean - all the filter media was left as is. Everything in our tank reads okay except for nitrite, it's currently reading about 10, maybe even 11 or 12. Ph was at 6.8~7.0, which is normal, alkalinity was ideal, nitrates were fine... etc.
Yesterday we added some stress coat, and it doesn't seem like it's done anything. Today, we did a 60g (50%) water change, and the levels still have not gone down. We haven't fed them for two days, and now we're going to leave the lights off for a couple days as well to try and ease stress. Do we just continue to do daily 50% water changes until the nitrites go back down, or is there something else we should be doing? This is a well established tank, been up for almost 2 years now and the levels have always been spot on and health, so I'm really concerned about our fish. Any advice?
Thanks!
