A fish-in cycle, which you are currently in; you mus do as follows or you are going to put your fish in jeopardy.
It seems you are good at doing water changes...lol...so this will not be so bad for ya.
Ammonia is produced by our fish, and that is toxic to our fish if it is over .25 ppm.
Firstly, Beneficial bacteria start to colonize in our filters to proccess Ammonia, when Ammonia is processed it turns to NitrIte.
Then there is another type of bacteria in our filters that process NitrIte to NitrAte.
There is no bacteria that grow in our filters to process NitrAte, so NitrAte must be taken out by water changes.
After the cycle is competed, you must do partial water changes once a week to keep the NitrAte in check.
So, this is where you are at.
You have added fish to an UN-CYCLED tank, therefore it must be cycled, and this is how you do it.
You must check your water parameters everyday, starting with Ammonia, first, like you have already witnessed, you have ammonia in your tank, and since ammonia is toxic to fish if it is over .25 ppm, yo must do water changes to keep ammonia down as close to zero as possible. You might be doing 2-3+ water changes a day to do this.
After a while you will start to see that your ammonia is not rising that high that fast all the time. This is because the type of bacteria in your filter that process ammonia are starting to grow. So now that ammonia is going down, your NitrItes are going to start to go up. Since when ammonia is processed, it turns into NitrIte.
Do the same thing with NitrIte that you did with ammonia, by doing water changes accordingly to keep the NitrIte down as close to zero as possible.
By this time you will see that Ammonia is almost always going to be at zero, due to the bacteria in your filter that are processing the ammonia into nitrIte.
Now, over a while you start to see that NitrIte is going to start to not be has high as fast, and you are going to be able to do less water changes now because you are now starting to colonize the type of bacteria that process NitrIte into NitrAte.
NitrAte is will start to harm fish if it is around 50+ ppm, so when it gets up near there, do a water change to bring it down.
This ENTIRE process takes about 4-6 weeks if everything goes according to plan. It may take longer.
After everything is all done and said, you will have colonized enough bacteria in your filter, to process Ammonia to NitrIte, and NitrIte to NitrAte.
Even though your ammonia test says at this point that there is no ammonia present in your tank, but there actually is. This trace ammonia is what keeps the beneficial bacteria in your filter alive, as ammonia is constantly being produced by your fish. The bacteria in your filter just process it soon enough before it gets to a detectable amount.
Things to remember:
Water changes are the only way to keep Ammonia and NitrIte down close to zero, until you have successfully colonized enough beneficial bacteria in your filter that will process ammonia and NitrIte for ya.
So get into a habit to do daily water changes for at least 4 weeks.
And remember, Ammonia and NitrIte are toxic to fish if they are over .25 ppm. If fish are exposed to high levels of either Ammonia and/or NitrIte the fish is going to have permanent gill damage, and it could shorten their life. They may not show any signs of this, but trust me, it DOES effect them
Hope this clarifies a few things for ya!
Hope to hear back from you with your questions!
-FHM
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i am currently trying to re-cycle my tank
