cycling my tank

[choc 1]

Hello all,

I am new to this forum but finding it very interesting, i have recently set a tank up and am doing regular water changes, in fact i'm checking for nitrite every day and finding it really high all the time. I change 40 litres of water a time but its not going down much i've had my tank about a fortnight now and got 4 platy's 13 neon tetra's and 3 silver lyretail molly's in there. Am i doing something wrong or should i just carry on

 

[weswest]

Hi, Welcome to the forum.

While lots of water changes will reduce the chemical levels in your tank in the short term, they actually slow down the cycling process. If all of your fish appear to be healthy, I would try leaving the tank for about a week and then check the levels.

There may be some people who will disagree with me here because leaving the levels can increase the stress on the fish, however it speeds up the cycling process, which I think is better for your aquarium in the long run.

Cycling takes about a month to complete, so I would not be worried at this point.
Just make sure that you are not overfeeding.

Good Luck!

 

[WILDER]

http/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/cycling2.htm
http/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/cycling.htm

 

[rdd1952]

If you have high nitrite levels, you definitely need to keep up the daily water changes. High nitrites are toxic and will kill your fish, especially the neons as they are not a good fish to cycle with. The cycling process without fish is totally different than with fish. Without fish you just let the levels rise as there isn't anythig in there for the toxins to kill. With fish, you have to make constant water changes to keep the levels low enough that they won't kill your fish. 20 fish is a huge load to be cycling with. I'm really surprised you haven't lost any fish yet.