Any Water Chemistry Experts?

[coldcazzie]

Your calculations are beyond me but it does make sense what you are saying.

I know its more important to get the Nitrite down and this will give me a more reliable Nitrate reading?

I guess its just water changes daily for now?

Yeah as big as they need to be to keep at 0

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Your calculations are beyond me but it does make sense what you are saying.

I know its more important to get the Nitrite down and this will give me a more reliable Nitrate reading?

I guess its just water changes daily for now?

Basic chemistry really, which doesn't matter much. The numbers are what they are... Your goal is to get the numbers to stay at zero. Do as many (and as large) water changes as necessary to keep the levels at zero. That might mean more than one in a day sometimes.


Keep your feedings to a minimum, and by no means allow extra food to stay in the tank for any amount of time. Gravel vac the substrate every time you do a water change to remove as much waste as possible... excess waste means a build-up of ammonia in the tank - which ultimately means more (and bigger) water changes. By being very good about the gravel vacs, you can save yourself more work in the future.

 

[Le Sorcier]

Glad to report all readings now at zero

 

[TwoTankAmin17]

Basically, your now spolved problem was caused by the fact that ammonia eaters grow faster than nitrite eaters. So when you moved over your bit of media you had a good head start on the ammonia eaters which were fairly quickly able to up their numbers. This is why your ammonia reading could be 0 so fast and yet you still had trites and trates showing up.. But the increase in ammonia eaters then bumped up your nitrite levels and there is was a lag between when that occured and when the nitrite eaters could reproduce sufficiently to handle the increased levels.

Because you did have both some ammonia and nitrite eaters to start, just not enough, you were also producing nitrate. Basically your tank needed time to catch up to the increased bio- load and did so exactly as is expected.

 

[james_fish]

Basically, your now spolved problem was caused by the fact that ammonia eaters grow faster than nitrite eaters. So when you moved over your bit of media you had a good head start on the ammonia eaters which were fairly quickly able to up their numbers. This is why your ammonia reading could be 0 so fast and yet you still had trites and trates showing up.. But the increase in ammonia eaters then bumped up your nitrite levels and there is was a lag between when that occured and when the nitrite eaters could reproduce sufficiently to handle the increased levels.

Because you did have both some ammonia and nitrite eaters to start, just not enough, you were also producing nitrate. Basically your tank needed time to catch up to the increased bio- load and did so exactly as is expected.

Good little post, didn't know that the bacteria that 'eats' ammonia grow faster than the nitrite 'eating' bacteria.

James.