High Nitrates/nitrites Losing Fish

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julibob

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Back for the first time in about a year, and I need some help urgently.

My sons tank broke about 4 weeks ago and I went out and bought him a new larger one (10 Gallons). Because I was going to have to put the fish straight in, I did all I could to get the tank right.

Here is what I did: The tank has a boxed, up-and-over filter which has ceramic rings in the end, and in the large compartment in the middle it had a big bag of carbon surrounded with filter foam. I replaced the carbon with well and truly matured ceramic media from my Eheim Ecco external pump. Put his fish in a bag and floated them in my tank (Juwel Vision 180). I then checked all my water levels twice, and they were: Ph 7.6, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, and Nitrates were 10. and filled his tank with water from mine. Checked the temp of his new water, re floted the fish in there, and then released them!

All has been perfect ( for a month) until Monday. His fish were all gasping, so I checked the water peramaters and they were: ammonia 0, Nitrite 0.50ppm and as for the Nitrates, they were about 100ppm!!!!

I did a 50% water change and added some Sera Nitrivec. I noticed lots of food waste in the tank, so Aidan has obviously overfed them. 2 days on and smaller water changes, the levels have not improved and he has lost 2 fish!!!!

What can I do?

Julia
 
Apart from testing your water again, and changing as required their is not much you can do, except not feeding them for a couple of days.

.50 nitrite is not so high that a water change should not fix it.
also 100 nitrates is high but unless a really finicky fish species then they should also be OK for a while
 
remove the fish put them in a bucket of mature water from your own tank and empty his tank start again with water from your own.

or hoover the gravel to try and remove any excess waste.
put another filter in if you have a spare and run both filters to try and clear any muck you stir up from the bottom.


good luck :good:
 
I think water changes are about all you can do. I would continue with large (25-50%) water changes daily until the nitrites are about 0, and the nitrates are more reasonable. (like 50ppm or less). Try vacuuming the gravel as well as you can with each water change, to get more of the extra food and waste out of it.

One thing you can try is to feed the fish less or not at all for a day or two. It should not hurt the fish, but will make them produce less waste, allowing the bacteria to catch up on the nitrites.

It sounds like you are already past the worst part for the fish, the ammonia spike. However, it might still take them a while to recover from the stress, and getting the nitrite to 0 and nitrates more reasonable will help them be less stressed.

When doing water changes, keep the filter media wet, and do not bother rinsing it, unless water flow is very restricted.

Good luck!
 

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