New Here

[Rhindon]

(do you have lots of rain where you are? if you wait for the middle of a downpour after the dirt's been washed off the roof you can take roof runoff and test it...)

~~waterdrop~~

Actually, I live in Tampa, Florida so yeah, this time of year, lots of rain. I live on the 2nd floor of a 3 story apartment building though.

 

[waterdrop]

see! now if you'd added your place to your profile I would have known some of that,lol.

 

[Rhindon]

Sorry about that. I'll go do that now.

At work, so I'll have to do the water change when I get home.

 

[waterdrop]

ok, good, it showed right up... good luck with the water change - at least if you get your feet wet you can just step outside and dry off poolside down there in Tampa, lol.

 

[Rhindon]

Yeah, but by 5 or 6 pm it's mostly rainy around here these days anyway, no sun to dry off in!

 

[Rhindon]

Not sure what happened. I tried the Amquell in the old tank to fight off the Nitrite problem with no luck. Tried last night and when I got home today nitrites were down to 0.00 again. Ammonia is still at 0.5 but it's that way from the tap. I didn't do the water change because with the tap being 0.5 I didn't think it would do any good. I will check in the morning though and see if I'm still getting 0.00 on the nitrites.

 

[waterdrop]

This is the Fluval 204 where we're hoping some of the bacteria survived a tap water cleaning, right? It could be that a larger number of nitrite processors survived but not so many ammonia processors did. I think you're doing the right thing given the situation. Keep an eye out for nitrite and perform a medium small gravel clean water change if you see nitrites show up. You might even benefit from a technique where you simply hold a bucket in one arm and use a large cup to scoop out some portion of a bucket that's easy at some point when you're standing there each evening or morning and then replace it with a similar amount of conditioned "ammonia tap water" ... these amounts would be so small that the ammonia wouldn't matter as much but you'd be putting a tiny bit of calcium in with the fresh water and taking out tiny bits of nitrite on a sort of frequent ongoing basis (this idea is just if it seemed convenient and kind of a "why not" sort of thing.) The problem we presume is that you're having to just wait out a mild fish-in cycling situation but the tap level of 0.50ppm NH3 restricts you from doing the normal larger water changes. Eventually the ammonia processors will develop and ammonia will be quickly taken care of even when it comes in from the tap with a water change.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rhindon]

This is the Fluval 204 where we're hoping some of the bacteria survived a tap water cleaning, right?

Yes, that's right. I will keep an eye on things and will be doing a bit of a gravel clean this weekend anyway so depending on my readings I might do a bit of a water change or very little.

The Pleco has found her favorite spot to drop her waste, so I need to clean that gravel. She drops a lot over the course of several days!