Nitrites driving me nuts....

[bcfd144]

OK, have a 150 gallon tank, has been set up for 2 years now.
When first set up, had a 305 and a 405 set up on it for filtration.
6 months ago, took the 305 off and put a Fx5 on it.
All has been fine the last 6 months..

So about a week ago, I took the 405 off and cleaned it. Did the usual cleaning.. Like you are supose to. Only thing I did different was there were some bags of carbon in there and I took them out.

So now for the past week, my Nitrites are up. They dont get any higher than 0.25ppm and the nitrates are around 20ppm. Everything else is normal. 7.8ph and 0 ammonia.
So, have been doing 40% water chages daily since.

You would think that all would turn normal fast, but its been a week and still doing it.
I do a 40% water change in the morning, check everything that night, and everything is fine. All levels were they are supose to be. Get up the next morning and see the nitrites are back up to 0.25ppm or so..
So do another 40% water change..

My thoughts are I shocked the 405 filter. Taking the Carbon bags totally out may have disturbed the bio load.

With the Fx5 still running (did not clean it) you would think the system would be back to normal fast.. but I guess I may have shocked the 405 filter and its now having to recycle..

any thoughts????? Am I right..


No trapped food in any of the filters. Have slowed feeding down and only feed half the amount..
Tanks has 2 Retic Rays in it.. thats it..

 

[ziggy2]

I would have to agree with you. Did you clean the filter with chorinated water? I made the same mistake once. You should be back to normal soon.

 

[bcfd144]

cleaned it with tank water..
What was (and I saw was) messing me up on figuring it out was the tests were not showing any ammonia. If ammonia was there, then it would be the filter cycling..
So today I went and bought a new test kit. Mine was about 9 months old. So the new kit shows there is a low amount of ammonia in the water. Which tells me the filter is recycling. I guess I cleaned it to much, or by taking the older bags of carbin out and adding new bio media in there, it may now be going thru a cycle.
Should be ok in another week or so. Hope it doesnt mess with the rays to much and cause them any problems..

thanks

 

[rhodes_96]

What is your media arrangement in the fx5 ?

 

[philfreenode]

You probably had beneficial bacteria growing in the carbon, which is now gone. especially if you didn't change it for a long time. carbon loses its effectiveness in chemical filtration over a rather short period of time but it still acts as a house for bacteria

 

[jgjoneslaw]

Yeah the FX5 pushes a lot of water but it's not the most efficient biological filter IMO. Still I would have thought it could handle the load itself even if your wiped out the bio filtration on the 405... strange. Are you heavily stocked? Perhaps once you get this under control you may want to add a large sponge filter for some added biological filtration.