High nitrate and nitrite

[Lewi99]

Hi I know a relative amount about tropical fish but I have a 35 gallon tank it’s been cycling for a month however I have got about ten medium sized cichlids and my nitrite and nitrate are exceedingly high, nitrite -5pmm nitrate 175pmm I’m extremely worried what should I do help me !

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate each day until the nitrite is 0 and the nitrate is less than 20ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Reduce the feeding during this time. The more food going into the tank, the more nitrate you will get.

Check your tap water for nitrates.

Having lots of plants in the tank can help because healthy growing plants use ammonia, nitrite & nitrate. Water Sprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides) is probably the best for cichlid tanks because it floats but can also be planted. However, Duckweed is another floating plant and that also absorbs a lot of nutrients.

 

[Lewi99]

Would a tank flush be better with the levels I have

 

[Colin_T]

no. Just do 75% water changes each day until it comes down. You can do it twice a day if you like, 12 hours apart. The first water change will dilute it quite a lot, then it will just be a matter of getting it back down to a low level

 

[Lewi99]

How many changes to get it back to normal also was thinking of getting some other fish with my 6 cichlids or should I just keep it like that

 

[Colin_T]

Usually 2 or 3 big water changes will get the levels down to a safe level.

Your first post says you have 10 cichlids in the 35gallon tank. That would probably be the limit depending on the actual tank dimensions (length x width x height) and what species you have. But do not add any new fish until the filters have settled and you have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite for at least 2 weeks.

 

[Lewi99]

So say if I rehomed about 4 of them would that be better if I rehomed 4 the ones I plan to keep are albino cichlids ellioti and blue acaras but okay Thankyou I’ll do that and let uno how it goes