what do you feed your cichs to prevent HITH
- Thread starter easydoesit
- Start date
am i the only one who thinks he maybe doing too much cleaning? especially during cycle. keep vacing and cleaning filters youll never cycle. but i've been wrong before.
im not a he for the second time.
im not cleaning the filters, theyre just kind of new. havnt touched them since i set the 55 up about a month n a half ago. the filter that i had before wasnt efficient for the 55, didnt really have much bacteria on the cartidges anyways.. only a tiny bit of the kind that converts ammo to nitrite. they were in a 20 before, and when i transfered them to the 55, the ammonia didnt add up quick enough to feed the bacteria im guessing, so the BB died.
i think its necessary to vac during a fishy cycle to keep ammo levels down, but idk. i shouldnt have done a fishy cycle in the first place, but i did. and i think vacuuming the gravel probably makes it take a while longer for the BB to establish.. but i think its something that needs to be done.
maybe im wrong though.
ammo hasnt even spiked yet. i really need to get my hands on some established filter media.. lol it would solve all of my O and I's problems.
im not cleaning the filters, theyre just kind of new. havnt touched them since i set the 55 up about a month n a half ago. the filter that i had before wasnt efficient for the 55, didnt really have much bacteria on the cartidges anyways.. only a tiny bit of the kind that converts ammo to nitrite. they were in a 20 before, and when i transfered them to the 55, the ammonia didnt add up quick enough to feed the bacteria im guessing, so the BB died.
i think its necessary to vac during a fishy cycle to keep ammo levels down, but idk. i shouldnt have done a fishy cycle in the first place, but i did. and i think vacuuming the gravel probably makes it take a while longer for the BB to establish.. but i think its something that needs to be done.
maybe im wrong though.
ammo hasnt even spiked yet. i really need to get my hands on some established filter media.. lol it would solve all of my O and I's problems.
easydoesit;1775552; said:
Real life girl! Not but seriously..
easydoesit;1775552; said:
Do you have a set of decent testing kits? Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. You need to remember that by gravel vacuuming to keep Ammonia down during a cycle, you're presumably removing Ammonia, which is great for the fish, but bad for the cycle, as it just postpones its completion. When you say you only had a tiny bit of bacteria in your previous filter cartridges with the bacteria Ammona to Nitrite, I wasn't aware that you could physically tell the difference, so I'm skeptical about this.
Are you even sure that the filters are cycling? If you don't know whether Ammonia has spiked or not, do some testing and post your Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate values here. If you need to pickup a testing kit, I also recommend picking up some Seachem Stability, will make that fish based cycle a lot safer.
yeah i have the API liquid n tube test kits- NH3, no2, no3. the only reason i knew that i had the bacteria that converts ammonia to nitrite is because i was testing and before i got new filters w/ new cartridges(but still used the ones from the old filter) i had readings of a small amount of nitrites.
lol i wasnt looking inside the filter and thinking 'well, this bacteria looks like the ammo-nitrite converting kind'
im pretty sure the ammonia hasnt spiked yet bc ive been getting readings and doing water changes kind of equally spaced apart.. havnt been getting quicker/higher readings than usual.
my params right now are:
NH3- <.25( a little bit lighter than the .25ppm color)
no2- 0
no3- 0
i do water changes when ammo gets to about .25ppm.
i think the filters are cycling.. really slow, but still getting there. dont all tanks cycle? theres still a little bit of ammonia running through them, so they have to be developing atleast a little bit of bacteria, right? yeah, they have to be cycling lol.
now that i see some HITH, i dont really want to slow down or stop vacuuming the gravel during water changes. im determined to get some BB in there somehow some way, so im gonna find a way. im sick of this balogna
lol i wasnt looking inside the filter and thinking 'well, this bacteria looks like the ammo-nitrite converting kind'
im pretty sure the ammonia hasnt spiked yet bc ive been getting readings and doing water changes kind of equally spaced apart.. havnt been getting quicker/higher readings than usual.
my params right now are:
NH3- <.25( a little bit lighter than the .25ppm color)
no2- 0
no3- 0
i do water changes when ammo gets to about .25ppm.
i think the filters are cycling.. really slow, but still getting there. dont all tanks cycle? theres still a little bit of ammonia running through them, so they have to be developing atleast a little bit of bacteria, right? yeah, they have to be cycling lol.
now that i see some HITH, i dont really want to slow down or stop vacuuming the gravel during water changes. im determined to get some BB in there somehow some way, so im gonna find a way. im sick of this balogna
