A Fish Tank For Children, Some Advice Please...

[upsy daisy]

I tested the ammonia this evening and it still was at 2! I did almost a 90% water change, which has resulted in pH dropping to 7.3 -7.4 and ammonia is on 0.5. I am still here but I am seriously tempted to add fish, even if it means frequent water changes.

 

[upsy daisy]

I have added 2 albino glowlight tetras and 3 glowlight tetras. They were shy at first, but livened up soon and fed, which I didn't expect.
Ammonia has been on pretty much on 0, but I have elevation in pH and in nitrates. Did a waterchange, which brought the pH from 8 to 7.3, but nitrates have stayed at 2-4, it's difficult to say by c*ap lighting.
I have no live plants at the moment. When do I have to start to worry about nitrates?

 

[OldMan47]

Nitrates are fine at 4 ppm or even at 20 ppm. Ammonia and nitrites are the problem children. If they are detectable in your tank it is time for a huge water change now that you have gone to a fish-in cycle.

 

[mark4785]

I have added 2 albino glowlight tetras and 3 glowlight tetras. They were shy at first, but livened up soon and fed, which I didn't expect.
Ammonia has been on pretty much on 0, but I have elevation in pH and in nitrates. Did a waterchange, which brought the pH from 8 to 7.3, but nitrates have stayed at 2-4, it's difficult to say by c*ap lighting.
I have no live plants at the moment. When do I have to start to worry about nitrates?

Hi,

A person named PDSimon (another forum user) told me nitrates are only troublesome at a level of 160 ppm. In terms of removing the nitrates from the water I believe he instructed me to do a 100% water change. This would involve taking all of the aquarium water out with a bucket, and placing all of your filter media into the last full bucket of aquarium water to ensure the beneficial bacteria doesn't dry up and die off. Begin heating up some water until it resembles the temperature of the aquarium water prior to the water change (remember to dechlorinate all of the water before adding to the tank) and add it to the aquarium until it's full again. Now reinstall your filter media providing the water is dechlorinated and temperature is familiar to that of the bucket of tank water.

You can also remove nitrate inadvertently by adding some aquarium plants.

 

[OldMan47]

There is no reason to remove all of the nitrates. Some fish have been shown to tolerate over 1000 ppm of nitrates while others are far more sensitive. All fish are harmed by very low levels of ammonia or nitrites. The 20 ppm rise is a guide we use for removing contaminants that we cannot measure easily. If you can keep your nitrates from rising more than 20 ppm, it seems to be enough to remove all of the contaminants we cannot measure. Since a mature filter will never show any ammonia or nitrites, those are not adequate to guide us on water change size or frequency.
If you maintain fish loads within reasonably light levels, as I do, you never need to measure nitrates, just do routine water changes and all will be well. If you push your fish loading to the levels some people would advocate, you may find that frequent large water changes are needed. Being able to tell the difference between fish loadings / bioloading is the real value of nitrate testing.

 

[PDSimon]

There is some confusion here, I think mark thinks this is a fishless cycle because the title of the thread says so, where infact it has turned to a fish-in cycle.

the 160 comment was referring to a fishless cycle, just to clear things up

 

[OldMan47]

I try to actually read the threads before responding. Regardless of the title, if a person has switched to fish-in cycling I change my advice accordingly. There are indeed those who rely on the title of a thread before giving advice but I try not to be one of those. Thanks for your input PDSimon.

 

[waterdrop]

How's your tank going UD? WD