Alm0stAwesome
Fish Aficionado
Ah, no fun, me too! At least it's Friday!
At the moment I would check the water daily and then change enough water to get my ammonia and nitrite to 0. Sometimes at first this is like 90% but you'll just have to use trial and error for the first couple changes to work out the amount you need to do. You can do as many water changes a day as you need to without hurting the fish as long as you dechlorinate the water first and roughly match the temperature of the water that you are adding back in to the water in the tank (a couple of degrees difference doesn't matter). Eventually (although it can take a couple of weeks) you'll test the water a couple of days in a row and the results will be 0 (except for nitrate, they will never be 0). Then you know that your bacteria are fully developed and you can relax a little! From this point on you can do weekly water changes to maintain the quality of the water in your tank.
I'm probably repeating everything you read about fish-in cycling in the beginners section but once you understand the way the nitrite cycle works it all becomes common sense
Once your bacteria have developed this is how it works:
Fish > produce ammonia > ammonia eating bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrite > nitrite eating bacteria turn the nitrite into nitrate > water changes remove the nitrate (which is only harmful at a very high level)
But at the moment you've not got the bacteria to remove the harmful ammonia and nitrite which is why you've got to remove it via water changes until the bacteria can catch up
At the moment I would check the water daily and then change enough water to get my ammonia and nitrite to 0. Sometimes at first this is like 90% but you'll just have to use trial and error for the first couple changes to work out the amount you need to do. You can do as many water changes a day as you need to without hurting the fish as long as you dechlorinate the water first and roughly match the temperature of the water that you are adding back in to the water in the tank (a couple of degrees difference doesn't matter). Eventually (although it can take a couple of weeks) you'll test the water a couple of days in a row and the results will be 0 (except for nitrate, they will never be 0). Then you know that your bacteria are fully developed and you can relax a little! From this point on you can do weekly water changes to maintain the quality of the water in your tank.
I'm probably repeating everything you read about fish-in cycling in the beginners section but once you understand the way the nitrite cycle works it all becomes common sense
Once your bacteria have developed this is how it works:
Fish > produce ammonia > ammonia eating bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrite > nitrite eating bacteria turn the nitrite into nitrate > water changes remove the nitrate (which is only harmful at a very high level)
But at the moment you've not got the bacteria to remove the harmful ammonia and nitrite which is why you've got to remove it via water changes until the bacteria can catch up
