Complete Redo

[TankOFish]

Yesterday I removed teh fish to do the water change.... My fish went into Nitrate shock? Where mine was to high BUT the tap water was perfect.. SO I Decided to REmove all the water and remove teh gravel.. The gravel was boiled the tank cleaned out and starting fresh.... SO teh nitrate level is 0 and everything is great...

I TRIED To clean the gravel with that stone vacume thing an I hate it.. It doesnt seem to work. Which is why it was all removed..

Ideas on how to keep it clean with out all the fuss? Will be waiting until Saturday to get some new fish in there to be sure every thing stays the same.. We added the water conditioners, stress Zyme and everything else...

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what are you doing about your filter...... have you scrubbed that out too? is it on a tank, running and with fish in the tank now? that's the main issue to watch out for when you do a big change around.

if you get a siphon you can clean the gravel easily, if you do it a little bit each week when you do a water change then you'll find it stays clean enough

 

[TankOFish]

what are you doing about your filter...... have you scrubbed that out too? is it on a tank, running and with fish in the tank now? that's the main issue to watch out for when you do a big change around.

if you get a siphon you can clean the gravel easily, if you do it a little bit each week when you do a water change then you'll find it stays clean enough

TWO Filters.. Only a 30 gallon tank... But we noticed that having the 2 is a huge help..

NO fish at the moment... The filters were completely cleaned out as well... Thanks... I will do the gravel cleaning ONCe every week as well...

 

[Squid]

High nitrates are managed by water changes. Regular weekly water changes. If Nitrate levels are high it's because you have not been doing the weekly 20% or so water changes and keeping an eye on the stats. If you have been doing the water changes and the nitrate levels are high, then perhaps you are overstocked.

Removing all the water and boiling the gravel will of course remove the nitrates, but probably introduce problems. The nitrates are there because you have built up the bacterial colonies to deal with any ammonia and nitrite in the tank. Tanks don't have bacteria that will munch away all the nitrates though, so we are back to doing the water changes there.

What do you mean by keeping it clean without all the fuss. You just need to do the water change once a week, hoover the substrate to remove excess waste, and keep an eye on the fish and the stats. This should take about 30 minutes a week depending on the size of your tank. I'm a bit fussy and it takes me a bit longer.

When doing a water change, you don't need to remove the fish. I just use a syphon to suck out 25% of the water whilst at the same time sucking up any waste, prune the plants if needed, do any necessary filter maintenance (making sure that if you clean the media such as sponges, that you do it in TANK water and not tap water), then dechlorinate some tap water and top up the tank.. et voila.. your done.

Your getting some new fish? did the old ones die. If so, your tank may have probably uncycled, so you may be back to square one. So if adding fish, do it slowly, as your cycling the tank again. Or are the other fish in there ok?

Do you have a test kit for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

Good luck
Squid

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah if there's now no fish in there there's nothing to keep the filters cycled....... if it's been like this for more than 12hrs then your back to square 1 i'm afraid and need to start over with either a fishless cycle or a cycle with fish.