Are My Levels Ok? What Do They Mean?

[claireylou]

Hi,

I am new to fish keeping and I think so far I have been very lucky, by the sounds of things! I inherited a tank of fish from someone who was moving to America and have never had fish before (except cold water goldfish when very young!). I have a rekord 600 Jewel tank I think, but it is quite old. I have had the tank for 4 months and none of the fish have died (yet), but over the weekend I had a disaster with the filter. After some excellent advice from this forum's members I hope I am back on track! I bought a Nutrafin test kit and did some tests here are the results:
Nitrite = 0 (it looked the same before and after)
Nitrate = 5
Ammonia = 0.6
Ph = 8

What do these mean and are the fish OK in a tank with levels like this?

I have 3 plants (real) and a piece of driftwood in the tank with some ornaments and some small fake plants.

Fish wise I have 4 rasbora (Harlequins?), 4 silver tipped tera, 1 glowlight, 1 neon, some cardinals, a kuhli loach and a pakistani loach. There is sand at the bottom of the tank too.

Any advice will be gratefully received.

Claire

 

[mattlee]

you will need to do a water change if you have any signs of ammonia showing on the tests, so its reduced to 0.

 

[claireylou]

Ok thank you! Will do one...

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Claire,

Looked like you were getting good advice from essjay and others over in the hardware section. Mattlee is right, you need a water change with good technique (which hopefully we outlined over there or you can read the fish-in cycling article here in the Beginners Resource Center.)

Whenever you test and find either ammonia or nitrite(NO2) in the tank with fish then you need to work on keeping it down until the bacteria can catch up to the amount of fish you have (or sometimes your gravel cleaning maintenance or your filter capacity is called into question.)

Your goal right now is to perform about a 75% water change with your siphon (keeping it high enough to keep sand out if you have sand but getting as much debris as possible by using your fingers to stir it up. The return water needs to be dosed at 1.5x or 2x whatever the dechlor chemical instructions are and you need to roughly temperature match (your hand is good enough for this.)

Your longer term goal is to test twice a day and try to be sure the ammonia (in this case) doesn't climb back up past 0.30ppm (the first color on your Nutrafin test kit) before you can be back home and water change again.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[claireylou]

Hi Waterdrop,

Yes the advice I am getting from you and everyone else is brilliant - thank you! I have now fixed the filter, which is still running smoothly (touch wood), didn't change all of my filter sponges (due to nice bacteria etc), just done another water change by siphoning all of the fish poo off the bottom of the tank - does fish poo hold ammonia? If so I wouldn't be surprised if this is what is causing the levels I have had. There was a lot of poo and when the water settles down a bit there will probably be a lot more! At least I have figured out how to use the siphon! I sucked the end, like essjay said! I didn't get any water/poo in my mouth thankfully! I have taken out the plastic plants now too. I filled up the tank back to the top. So will test in the morning and re-post, hopefully that will be ok? Poor little fish (but it is all for their benefit!). I was surprised I didn't force the loaches out of hiding with all the stirring about I did! I have no idea where they both hide!

Thanks again

Claire

 

[OldMan47]

The fish waste doesn't really hold the ammonia as much as it provides the nitrogen that ends up being made into ammonia. Any decaying organic waste can produce ammonia, but in a typical tank a large fraction of the ammonia is actually coming from the fish's gills. If you get a lot of the fish waste stirred up into the water without being removed, it will decay more quickly and give you a nitrogen spike. The first stage we see of nitrogen is in the form of ammonia. Simple NH3.

 

[claireylou]

I have done 3 water changes this weekend and sucked up untold quantities of poo! The ammonia levels are still the same 0.6 colour by the looks of things. There is still some more poo to suck up - every time I do it it stirs up the muck and therefore when it settles I realise I have yet more poo to suck up! I will keep on going...I take it is better to keep doing water changes and to not let things settle for a bit? Will it stress out the fish? I will keep on going anyway. Now that I have the fish bug!

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, you're doing great. Eventually you will start seeing the fruit of your work in the test results but I'm sure you can already see that you are acheiving a cleaner and cleaner tank already. It will not stress the fish to have water changes. On the contrary, what stresses fish more is when fishkeepers lose their early on enthusiasm and don't do -enough- water changes!

~~waterdrop~~