Dodged A Bullet!

eaglesaquarium · Jul 3, 2011

Could you consider stealing a bit of media from each of the other tanks to seed this tank and cut the odds of having any more spikes until the test kit comes... (Usually taking 1/3 of the media leaves you without any spikes, so taking half of that amount - 1/6 - should leave you with plenty of bacteria for the established tanks and a nice little seeding bundle for the uncycled one. You probably should keep up with the water changes, but you could cut it down to every two days and only 50% safely. It's possible that you wouldn't even need to do the water changes at all, but better safe than sorry.

You could also just stop feeding the fish entirely until the test kit comes... The fish will survive just fine without the food for a few days.

This Old Spouse · Jul 3, 2011

Duh ... I just realized I have extra filter media just sitting around ...

This Younger Spouse · Jul 3, 2011

I did rob the mature filter media from one of the filters on my 20 gallon and added it to the 55 a couple days ago.

There are two filters on the 20 gallon, one designed for a 20 and one designed for a 10. I took the media out of the smaller filter, so now I have twice the mature filter media in the 55 that I did when it spiked.

After this WC I just did, I'm not going to feed the cichlids for a couple days. We do have a few aquarium enthusiasts in town. I'm thinking it's a good idea to take some of the water from the 55 over to one of those folks for testing. The fish seem very healthy, with no rapid breathing or clamped fins, but it irks me to have to fly blind this soon after an ammonia/nitrite spike.

This Younger Spouse · Jul 3, 2011

I think it's also prudent to do a few more large WCs, probably daily, for the next couple of days. At least 50-70 percent. It'll be July 5 or 6 until I can get the water tested locally. Everybody's off vacationing over the July 4th holiday.

Oh, and as an aside, I read up on the science of the nitrogen cycle on this forum a few days back, specifically how pH and water temp impact ammonia toxicity. Good news there is that I keep my tank at 76 F, and our pH is 6.6, both good things when it comes to ammonia.