New To The Hobby And Think I've Made Alot Of Mistakes

[Lampshade444]

Hi, i am new to the hobby! I bought a 95L tank 10 days ago. not realising i must cycle the tank, i added fish after the first day! I now have,

3 Guppies
2 mollys
2 Platys
1 Sailfin molly
2 neon tetras
1 female fighter
1 Albino catfish

The tank doest look overstocked but i fear it is! I've taken tests with an Api Test kit for the last 2 days.
Yesterday;

pH - 7.6
Ammonia - 1.0
Nitrite - 0.25
Nitrate - 5.0

And today 2 hours after a 30% water change;

pH - 7.5
Ammonia - 0.5
Nitrite - 0.25
Nitrate - 5.0

I'm not sure exactly what i should be looking for with the tests but i know the nitrite should be 0 and Ammonia should also be zero!
Could somone please Point me in the right direction!
Thanks in advance!

Sean, Ireland

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Lampshade.

You should be looking for both ammonia and nitrites less than 0.25 ppm at all times. Your pH will be fine for that particular selection of fish but you need an immediate 50% or larger water change just to get your ammonia to a tolerable level. You are likely to find that your stocking level will mean changing at least 50 litres daily for most of the next month but close monitoring will let you make adjustments to the amount. Something that will help a little is if you can limit the amount that you feed each day so that there will be less fish waste in the water to give off ammonia while it decays. Gravel cleaning along with the water changes will also help keep the ammonia production down.

 

[Lampshade444]

Thank you for your reply! I had thought something along those lines but wasnt sure if to many water changes would take the good bacteria out of the water as well as bad and didn't want to do another water change until advised to! Thank you so much, you have been really! I'll do a 50 litre water change Right now!

 

[OldMan47]

The good bacteria is not in the water to any significant extent. The bacteria we are trying to have colonize our filters lives mostly on surfaces with good water flow and good oxygen content. It describes the surfaces in a typical filter fairly well but I removed well over 80% of my water for 4 days in a row when I had a nitrite spike on a new filter recently. On day 5 it had settled back out to where it belonged and I went a week after that before needing a water change just to control nitrates, the usual weekly small water change. The nitrite processing bacteria rebuilt while I was discarding almost all of my water daily. They were obviously not in that water.

 

[arobinson1984]

Good advice here from oldman.

The tank doesnt look overstocked in terms of tank size in the long run but obviously it is quite heavily stocked in terms of the amount of fish you would normally use for a fish-in cycle.

You want to be keeping the ammonia / nitrite levels below 0.25ppm, or even at 0 if possible.

Don't be afraid to do larger water changes such as 75/80% if your test results indicate you need to, for example, if you have 1.0ppm for ammonia then a 50% change will effectively bring the levels down to 0.50ppm then another 50% change would bring it down to 0.25ppm and so on. Always leave 1 hour after doing a water change before testing the water or doing another water change.

As long as you dechlor the new water properly, I'd advise using 1.5x the amount of conditioner on an uncycled tank and ensure the new water is as close to the tank water temperature wise then a large change wont have any negative effects. Water changes do slightly stress the fish until they are used to you doing them but the stress isnt anywhere near as bad as the damage that high ammonia / nitrite will cause.

Andy

 

[OldMan47]

Do not hesitate to do even larger water changes than 50%. When I went through my nitrite problem, I judged how much water to leave behind in the tank by deciding that if I drained any more the fish would be flopping around on a wet substrate instead of swimming. Since my fish were very small, the water left behind in the tank was only about 3/4 inch deep or a bit less. The fish did not appreciate that they were losing all of their water but looked much better right after their tank was refilled than they did before I started.The stress of a huge water change is nothing compared to the stress caused by bad water chemistry.

 

[Lampshade444]

Thanks a million for your advice guys! I will do a large water change every day and a test to make sure that everything is going ok! I'll let ye know how it progresses!