Done my water tests when I got home from work, and had some strange results again <a href="http://aquarium.stormail.co.uk/waterdata.php" target="_blank">http://aquarium.stormail.co.uk/waterdata.php</a>. Basically, added more ammonia last night and it rose to 6ppm (nitrites were at 5ppm and nitrates at 10ppm). Today I'm getting 2ppm ammonia, 2ppm nitrites and only 5ppm nitrates. The ammonia and nitrites makes sense, assuming the bacteria are working, but wheres my nitrates gone? or could it have been an inaccurate reading yesterday?

as for the temperature, thats dropped too - from 28 to 26. Or at least we're pretty sure it was 28, but thinking back now we're not 100% convinced (i'm sure the reading was on the green marker on the thermometer, but 28 is just outside the green!).

also, the water and filter arent behaving as they were - there's a lot more water tension (the surface barely moves, presumably the bacteria causing it?), and the filter doesnt seem to push out as much water as it did a few days ago (and is this expected because of the filters being full of bacteria?!) - the suction things holding on the heater are covered in bacteria though, so i can only imagine what the inside of the filter looks like!

(oh, and we added the carbon filter & fine filter when we setup the filter initially - mainly because the instructions were crap and we didnt know if we were meant to or not - would we be better off removing them?)

finally, about the snails - LFS didnt have copper cure so had to go with Interpet's Anti-Snail. It's contains copper sulphate, but only says that the snails will be knocked out, not killed - if I ignore the instructions, increase the dosage, dont change the water after 24 hours (I have no fish yet anyway), and treat for the next few days, will that kill them?

thanks

This post has been edited by iankent: May 1 2008, 12:04 AM