Cycling My New Tank Help

[AngelfishGirl]

I have a 29 gallon tank that has been cycling since feb 2nd, with 2 common goldfish. I made the mistake of using Cycle which I later found out did nothing. Monday I started using Seachem Prime with daily 25% water changes. Today I did a water test and found that I have no ammonia, nitrite is 0.1 and nitrates are at 5. How can I turn the nitrites into nitrates ? Am I doing things right here?

 

[fatheadminnow]

to TFF!!!!

What kind of test kit are you using?

You need to do water changes whenever your ammonia and/or nitrite are above .25 ppm. You need to keep your ammonia and/or nitrite below .25 ppm by doing water changes.

There are bacteria that colonize in your filter that will process nitrite, when they process nitrite it turns into nitrate. So, only time will allow your bacteria to colonize in large enough amounts to process all the available nitrite into nitrate.

Read here:
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=224306

-FHM

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Angelfishgirl.
You are doing fine. The Prime is just a dechlorinator that removes chlorine and helps slightly if you get some small traces of ammonia in the water. It does not create a cycle but keeps the new water that you are adding safe for the fish. The advice from FHM on doing water changes is about all that you need to worry about if you have a liquid type water testing kit and test often enough to prevent a deadly build of nitrite before you can detect it. Nitrates will only build up significantly when you start to back off on the water changes. As long as you are doing frequent changes to control nitrites, the nitrates will really not build up much.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, welcome to the forum and I agree on all the water advice from OM47 and FHM above.

A nice big tall 29G is a better situation than we usually see for a pair of goldfish. While they are small this will give them a good start. Unfortunately, since these are the common variety, they will grow to a foot or even 18 inches in body length and really are pond fish unless you are one of the rare people wanting to provide a really monster tank. (by monster I mean probably a 60G or bigger...)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[discus_lover]

i read that link..nice one...