Nitrite Not Going Down... I Know, Discussed 100 Times Already... Pleas

[gabriel.mihu]

Had fish tank 20 years ago, for about 2-3 years (I was 15 or less). Anyways, no cycling, no filter, 100% weekly water changes.
 
About 5 weeks ago, bought a 36g fish tank.
 
What I need is advice strictly to why the nitrites keep staying up, with ammonia low all the time and nitrates pretty low. I read articles, the only kind of similar situation I could find was here, but they guy had no fish, though:
http/www.fishforum.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13737&sid=3e085829c9804f48c6db2c2487e6a698&start=60#p104770
 
I would appreciate suggestions, if any. Thank you.
 
The process:
 
- filled with water, start the filter, put gravel, wood, lava stones, added stones (washed, cleaned hard stones - granite, river stones, no marble, no lime stone... - and plants with time
 
- started to put fish in it as soon as the next day, 3-5 a week - now I have about 20 fish in it (9 tetra neon, 2 cory cats, 5 danios glofish, 1 guppy, 1 platty, 5 little guppies as old as the tank)
- during the first three weeks, a few fish died, within 1-2 days in my tank (one of them actually had a discolored hole in it, just noticed it when I got home)
 
Water testing:
 
- started water testing after the first three days or so
 
- pH - constant around 7.6-7.8
 
- Ammonia - .25, around .5 after a week, went down to <.25 after 10 days from beginning, and stayed there
 
- nitrites - 0 on days 3, 5, 10, >5ppm day 26, 2-5ppm after 40% water change in day 16, .5ppm after 60% water change on day 18, 2ppm on day 19, stable at around 5ppm, now looks like around 5ppm still
 
- nitrates - 10 on days 3, 5, 10, 40 on day 26, 10ppm after, now at 10ppm
 
Tap water: no ammonia, no nitrites, no nitrates
 
Fish seem to be doing fine, I just added this week three more tetra neons and 1 green cory cat. They seem to be breathing normal, move along just fine, not agitated, not slow, eat fine.
 
Thank you again, for any suggestions related to nitrites.
 
 

 

[Blondielovesfish]

While your levels are elevated, you should not be adding any more fish.
 
The idea with fish in cycle is, you add a few fish for several weeks and they slowly build up the amount of beneficial bacteria, once the levels are stable (no ammonia or nitrite), you add a few more fish, then wait until the levels are stable before adding anymore. You keep on doing this until your tank is stocked appropriately.
 
Every time you add fish, your tank goes through a minicycle, where the beneficial bacteria build up their numbers until they can cope with the new bioload.
But, because you added lots of fish within a relatively short time, your tank is constantly going through a mini cycle, except it is bigger than that, because your tank was never fully cycled before you added more fish.
 
You have three options...
Option One: Rehoming half of your fish (the ones kept in inappropriate school sizes would be the best to go), and go from there, letting your bacteria colony build up sufficient numbers to handle your load, you can then add a few more fish, a maximum of 3 at a time, and then wait until your levels are safe before adding 3 or so more fish.
 
Option Two: Rehoming all of your fish, start fresh and do a fishless cycle, and then restock the tank.
 
Option Three: Get a hold of some mature media, enough to fill about 3/4 of your filter. But be careful, as you don't want the person giving you the media to go through a mini cycle.

to the forum BTW.

 

[Francesjane]

The above suggestions are best...if you have no alternative to those suggestions (and I was caught in the no other alternative bracket) I would suggest doing a daily 50% water change. Some might say this is right or wrong, but I done this for a good three weeks solid until finally my nitrites started going down, as it was the nitrites that was constantly up...I done enough water changes to keep my nitrites under 1. I simply thought of the fish and their comfort as best I could in a horrid situation.

 

[daizeUK]

Hi Gabriel,
Assuming that your nitrite is currently 5ppm, I would recommend a 60% water change immediately to bring it down to 2ppm.  I would like to recommend adding some aquarium salt to reduce the toxicity of your nitrite but your cories won't like salt.
Continue to do water changes as necessary to keep your nitrite under 2ppm.
 
Blondie is absolutely right about not adding any more fish until your ammonia and nitrite are both zero.  You are only prolonging your cycle and the suffering of all your fish.

 

[gabriel.mihu]

Thank you guys. Water changes it is. A guy at the fish store said: no water changes ever! Well, I kind of thought he was not right, that's why I asked.
 
Again, fish seem fine, I know about the cycle, I know I wasn't on my best behavior

.
 
I will do the water changes and see if I can compensate with some bacteria from someone.
 
Question: is my biofilter too small? I got a aqueon 36 gallon bowfront, that comes with an aqueon quietflow 30 filter system, that has a biofilter in shape of a plastic... something (like an aluminum toothed heat radiator). Is the filter/biofilter too small for the 36 gallon tank?
 
(if I should continue the discussion in another thread, let me know)
 
(and yes, Blondie, I read your cycling guide, and lots of relevant things to my situation ).

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Just an FYI- the amount of salt one must add to a tank to counteract the effects of nitrite are extremely low. There is almost no fish that cannot tolerate the levels needed for the amount of time that is involved.
 
To counteract a 5 ppm nitrite level it takes 75 mg/L of common table salt. So if you have a 100 L volume of water, you need 7,500 mg of salt. This means you need 7.5 grams of salt. I have an Ohaus triple beam gram scale and a container of Mortons table salt. One level teaspoon of the salt weighs 6 grams. So to counteract a nitrite reading of 5 ppm all you need is about 1.25 teaspoons of salt in 100 litres of water. For the other Americans out there, this is just over 26 gallons.
 
But lets remember in all of this that the bacteria won't handle over 16 ppm of nitrite (API test kit etc,) So the most nitrite one might handle with salt is about 15 ppm. I would not want to trust to testing accuracy not to stop there or a tad lower. So if one had to handle three times the nitrite in the above example, the dose is basically 1.25 tablespoons going into that 100 L/26+ gal. After this one must do a water change to protect the bacteria not the fish.
 
But all of this could be avoided very easily- Do a fishless cycle. There is almost no reason that this cannot be done almost anywhere anytime. Even if one can not find ammonia in any form, you can still use organic things like a piece of shrimp or fish to create it. But if one is simply not willing to do this, then they should not be told to do lots of water changes etc etc, this is simply not the proper way to do a fishless cycle. people who want to do a fishless cycle will have to spemd the time needed to learn about NH# and NH4, they will have to spend more money on tests and buy more supplies so they can learn to do diluted test.
 
Fishless cycling done properly takes more knowledge, more work and more total time to get a tank fully stocked and more money spent as well. If one insists on doing a fishless cycle, this should be enough to make them change their minds. But if it isn't, then they need to understand that doing massive water changes for extended periods is not necessarily safe for fish. That much major disruption to what are likely fish from stores that are not in the best shape to begin with and then which are subjected to some level of ammonia and/or nitrite followed by a big water change repeatedly is going to cause stress. And this means there is no way to prove this course of action insures no harm comes to fish or even less harm than allowing levels to reach points where they still realistically don't harm fish but do cycle the tanks much faster.
 
But finally, the reasons for doing fisless cycling are simple. if one makes a mistake, fish won't suffer or die. Doing a fish in cycle, even knowing what you are doing does not guarantee this. Doing a fishless cycling with repeated massive water changes does not guarantee this either.
 
IMO there are only two ways to correct a fishless cycle gone wrong. First, add enough bacteria to get a tank cycled very fast- instantly to a day or two. Second, take out all the fish and continue with a fishless cycle. And the reasons for not wanting to do a fish in cycle should be obvious. My hope in explaining how to do a fish in cycle right in itself will intimidate most new fish keepers from wanting to start of continue one. I simply will not tell folks that doing repeated massive water changes is a good way to fish in cycle or is safe for fish when I pretty know otherwise.
 
gabriel, the guy in the store was wrong in what he told you, sometimes water changes are need during a fish in cycle, there are even times they are needed in a fishless cycle. But then those who say do lots of massive water changes at the slightest sign of ammonia or nitrite are also wrong. If you cannot get bacteria into the tank, get the fish out and then finish the cycle without them. Those are the only two guaranteed ways no fish will not be harmed during your cycling.

 

[daizeUK]

TTA are you saying that there is never any need to perform water changes due to high nitrite (up to the tolerance limits of the nitrifying bacteria) as salt is always the preferred method?  Or is there a nitrite level at which salt addition is insufficient to counteract toxicity and where water changes would be advised?  If nitrite rises further then how should we calculate how much more salt to add, is it a linear relationship?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

yes daize. to counteract nitrite add chloride at 10 time the concentration of the nitrite. You may want to go higher if you have fish in less than decent shap to insure they are being protected w/o a doubt.
 
And, no I am not saying let nitrite run rampant. But the point at which one might need to do a water change is not fixed. To the best of my knowledge nitrite is only toxic if it is inside the fish. There is no level of exterior harm as far as I know. The chloride blocks the nitrite inside the fish. Salt is an easy way to get chloride into a tank.
 
But this method is prevalent in the aquaculture industry. If you have a few acre pond full of fish you cannot do a water change.
 

 
Luckily, although we often cannot prevent the occurrence of high nitrite, its effects can be minimized or neutralized safely and economically. Sodium chloride (common salt, NaCl) is used to “treat” brown blood disease. Calcium chloride can also be used but is typically more expensive. The chloride portion of salt competes with nitrite for absorption through the gills.Maintaining at least a 10 to 1 ratio of chloride to nitrite in a pond effectively prevents nitrite from entering catfish. Where catfish (or other fish) have bacterial and/or parasite diseases, their sensitivity to nitrite may be greater, and a higher chloride-to-nitrite ratio may be needed to afford added protection from nitrite invasion into the bloodstream. As a general rule, catfish producers strive to maintain at least 100 ppm chloride in pond waters as “insurance” against high spikes of nitrite concentration. Culturists of other species may want to assume that nitrite is a potential problem and use salt as an insurance buffer as well.
 
How to calculate the amount of salt needed
Before treatment rates can be calculated, chloride and nitrite concentrations in the water, as well as pond or tank volume, must be determined. Commercially available water quality test kits can be used. Contact your Extension fisheries or aquaculture specialist for assistance in locating sources for test kits and conducting and interpreting these tests. The amount of salt needed for the pond can be calculated using the following formulas:
 
Formula 1
(10 x pond nitrite concentration) - (pond chloride concentration) = parts per million (ppm) of chloride to add to the pond.
The number “10” used in this formula is the minimum desired chloride:nitrite ratio  number. It is used here to get a 10 to 1 chloride to nitrite ratio. If a higher ratio is desired, substitute the higher number for the 10.
If the answer is zero or a negative number, chloride concentration is sufficient to prevent brown blood disease.

from http/www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/NitritePonds.pdf
 
Somewhere, in a piece on nitrite I have read, it stated that the scientific community feels that any nitrite study that fails to take chloride level into account is basically worthless.
 
Now, folks reading this should not take the above as an excuse to put salt into fw tanks as a general way to protect their fish. Bear in mind that the use of chloride to counteract nitrite is not a permanent solution, establishing your bio-filter is. Chloride is a way to get though nitrite levels during a fish in cycle and be able to allow nitrite to rise and thus to complete the cycle faster. We are just stealing a page form the pond keeper's book to do it.

 

[daizeUK]

It would be really useful to have this info in a fish-in cycling guide, I think.  It sounds like anybody who does a fish-in cycle should be adding salt as general practice.  I just thought it would hurt the cories but I guess the nitrite probably hurts them more.  Along with general advice about what types of fish to stock and how many to stock and what are the acceptable maximum levels of ammonia at various pH ranges.  These questions come up so often and a lot of conflicting advice is given from various well-meaning people.  Not that we want to encourage fish-in cycling, I realise, but I think a guide would be great to set standards for those who do it.

 

[KirkyArcher]

Salt (in suitable medication sized dosage) does not effect Corydoras in any harmful ways, no proof exists that it does! 

 

[gabriel.mihu]

Ok, I decided to wait a couple of days and see what happens. I added 1 shaved tablespoon of salt, that should have decreased the nitrites, on the 13th. I did not test anything right after that. Another thing I did was to dump about 20ml of bacteria stuff (bought from the store) straight into the filter. I did that before (10 ml each day, for a few days), but did not see any results.
 
Instead, I tested the water yesterday (15th), showing me <1ppm, and today (16th) showing me less than .25ppm nitrites.
 
Nitrates are under 10ppm.
 
It seems that whatever you guys advised me and I did, it worked, so thank you. It seems that a little bit of patience helped, too. All fish still alive and well.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Do not misunderstand how chloride works. It does not change the amount of nitrite in the water, that can only be done via water changes or because bacteria convert it to nitrate. What salt does is add chloride to the water. This passes into the fish and it attaches to the same sites in the blood cells that the nitrite would. This prevents the nitrite from doing so. But this does not have any affect on nitrite levels in the water.

 

[gabriel.mihu]

Do not misunderstand how chloride works. It does not change the amount of nitrite in the water, that can only be done via water changes or because bacteria convert it to nitrate. What salt does is add chloride to the water. This passes into the fish and it attaches to the same sites in the blood cells that the nitrite would. This prevents the nitrite from doing so. But this does not have any affect on nitrite levels in the water.

 
Ok, good to know... I was thinking what would make NaCl to react with the NOx and neutralize it? I did not go into the depths of it... you said it's good to be done, and when I read your first post about it, it seemed a very reasonable explanation, so I did it (added the salt). Going back on it, I see there was nothing about neutralizing NOx, but rather making the fish "immune" to the NOx.
 
Anyways, thank you.