Nitrites are high please help

[Drumm22]

Nitrite means your filter is not doing it's thing. Either not mature yet or you killed it by cleaning the bio media.

All i did was do a 30% water change, cleaned some of the substrate and that was it

 

[Drumm22]

add an algae reducer/nitrate reducer chemical.

A nitrate reducer will reduce nitrites ?

 

[Kolton13]

um, yes

 

[Drumm22]

Test your local water, there could be nitrates in there.

My nitrate level was fine. Its my nitrite level. Or does that go hand in hand

 

[Drumm22]

um, yes

Why dont they make a nitrite reducer?

 

[Kolton13]

it's like an algae reducer. works good with me

 

[Drumm22]

it's like an algae reducer. works good with me

Ok cool, i added prime in there it said i can use it in emergency . Ill go pick some up tn thank you!

 

[Kolton13]

yup!

 

[kendragon]

All i did was do a 30% water change, cleaned some of the substrate and that was it

Substrate do carry biological bacteria. So yes, you most likely disrupted the cycling of your tank.

 

[deeda]

You don't need to buy anything to reduce nitrites, just perform some water changes and don't forget to add your dechlorinator to the new water.

Either your tank wasn't fully cycled before you added fish or you were too vigorous cleaning or replacing your filter media.

Prime will temporarily bind harmful ammonia and nitrite for 24 hours but it is not a long term solution.

Since you are new to testing with the API test kit, be sure to follow the instructions exactly for the amount of water in the test tube, the proper number of reagent drops and the amount of time to wait to read the color.