Advice Wanted!

[debbie888]

Hi all

Ok posted a post in tropical fish emergencies last night about one of my yellow barbs flicking against the gravel....I did a 30%water change last night, and tested the water again this morning, readings were much the same as last night before water change....

Ammonia 0
PH 7.4
Nitrate 10
Nitrite was a little lower than 0.1...but not 0.

I was wanting to know if I do another water change again tonight, and also wanted to ask, would it harm my fish if I took out ornaments and plants to give the gravel a good vac out...?

My tank is 160 litre!

Thanks in advance

Debbie

 

[ox5477]

It wont hurt the fish is everything is removed for a good cleaning. May cause a little stress but they will be fine once everything is put back in.

Def keep doing the water changes until you get a 0.0000000000000 on nitrite.... this is poisonous to fish and you need to get rid of any traces of it immediatly.



Just a few questions as well:

- have you recently added new fish?

- was this tank recently set-up?
- if yes, did you do a complete cycle on the tank before adding your fish?

 

[debbie888]

It wont hurt the fish is everything is removed for a good cleaning. May cause a little stress but they will be fine once everything is put back in.

Def keep doing the water changes until you get a 0.0000000000000 on nitrite.... this is poisonous to fish and you need to get rid of any traces of it immediatly.



Just a few questions as well:

- have you recently added new fish?

- was this tank recently set-up?
- if yes, did you do a complete cycle on the tank before adding your fish?

Thanks for the reply

Nope not added new fish to the tank, have had the tank set up just 2 month now, and nope did not do a complete cycle before adding fish I know I know that was wrong, didn't know about this site then, and was not advised too well by my local LFS , have persisted with water changes and have seen my stats come down dramatically, just still trying to get them 'spot on'.

Ok wanted to also mention as to why there has not been ever much of an ammonia reading, as I thought that was the start of the cycling process? Forgive me if I am wrong, am just wanting to learn learn learn so I can look after my little fishes!

Debbie

 

[ox5477]

It does start with ammonium. strange that you didnt see any large instances of it but maybe you just had a good healthy stock of bacteria that grew quickly. Keep doing wc's and eventually, things will become as they should

 

[Colin_T]

check your test kit because some kits don't go down to 0.0. They use 0.5 or something similar as their lowest reading. lso check the tap water and see if that is 0.0.

You don't have to take everything out to gravel clean the tank. Just move the stuff from one side, gravel clean under it, and then move it back. Then if you haven't taken out too much water you can do the other side in the same way. If you have removed more than 1/2 of the tank water then leave the other half of the gravel cleaning until the next water change.

Plants are best left in the gravel if they are planted in it. If they are in pots you can move the pots, otherwise just gravel clean around them.

 

[WILDER]

Better off sticking to the same thread then starting another one.

 

[debbie888]

OOps sorry wilder, my apologies

 

[debbie888]

check your test kit because some kits don't go down to 0.0. They use 0.5 or something similar as their lowest reading. lso check the tap water and see if that is 0.0.

Ok well I have checked the tank again with a different test, the one I originally used I would have thought would have been the most accurate, the different test I just used is showing nitrite as 0 now, tap water also tested as 0...so I dunno....thought it was nitrite that might be causing my fish to flick, but now I don't know....?

 

[Colin_T]

take a sample to the LFS and test the same sample with your kits. Compare the results between your kits and theirs.