Newbie (sort Of) - Question About Cycling With Fish

[yoz0807]

Well the new test kit arrived yesterday andd when I got home I was straight into it.

Ph - 7.6
amm - 0.25
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 40

Did a partial water change as the ammonia was not zero

I think the transplant of the tank, water and filter seems to have gone ok.

Or am I wrong ???

Seachem prime has arrived today so I am going to dose the tank with that tonight.
I was thinking of dosing at 50% even though I will probably not be doing a water change tonight (hopefully)
Would this be ok?
Can you overdose the tank with this stuff?

 

[waterdrop]

Prime has the top reputation among conditioners and will be fine to help convert some of your ammonia into ammonium for the night. You can dose it at 1.5x the instructions or even 2x but not over 2x, would be my recommendation.

As a way to detoxify ammonia for your fish though, starting tomorrow, water changes are what you should do, not conditioning. Your new test kit is the main tool of course and your goal is to get ammonia and/or nitrite(NO2) (if any shows up) at or as close to a zero reading as possible such that hopefully it will not rise above 0.25ppm prior to your being able to be back home to do another water change. (ie. if it goes above then that is feedback that you needed a bigger percentage water change but if it is still significantly below then you could have made it with a lesser water change or could have gone another 12 hours without one perhaps.)

Now for you, all that sounds more heavy-handed than you'll probably need as you should have a really extensive mature-media startoff we hope! So just test a lot and consider larger water changes (with good technique of course!) to be your friend. You are like me, previously experienced with tank keeping, so you'll have some established prejudices possibly. One of the ways that TFF changed my habits was the realization that larger water changes are often more effective and that being overly concerned about shock effects of larger changes is seldom necessary (its still a concern in certain circumstances but just not nearly as generally as is commonly held I believe.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[ALW]

I wouldnt change any more water at the moment. Leave it 24-42 hours and then retest the water, your filter may be able to process the ammonia and nitrites but if you keep changing the water then you are not giving it a chance. A volume of that size the levels will dilute the ammonia and nitrites more than a smaller sized tank so the fish should be fine.

 

[yoz0807]

Thanks for the answers.
I am glad you have said that Andy. Ihad been thinking about how I could tell if the bacteria or water changes were reducing the nasties.
I will test tonight when I get home and providing there are no big surprises I will leave the water change.
At least that will give me time to get some long hose to connect straight to the tap.

carting all this water is killing my back

 

[Curiosity101]

Andy is incorrect.
There only needs to be 0.0001ppm (which would show up as 0 on your test kit) ammonia in the water for the bacteria to multiply.
Also 0.25ppm in 10l or 1000l is the same concentration...and it is the concentration of ammonia or nitrites that causes the damage. Not the physical amount.

Your fish will be harmed by living in levels of 0.25ppm. I agree with waterdrop that your bacteria should catch up relatively quickly (hopefully).
But in the meantime you fish need to be protected from unneccesary ammonia poisoning.

And you will know that the bacteria are lowering ammonia levels as either A) They will not increase by the time you next test. EG. Ammonia is 0.25 now, you do a 50% water change (so the ammonia will now be 0.125), you come back to test the next day and you find that the ammonia is still as 0.125ppm (and nitrites as 0).
or B) You do the above water change, come back and your ammonia is less than 0.125ppm.

If you find that after 24hours the ammonia level remains at 0.125 or below, then no more large water changes should be necessary. Just test the water each day to keep an eye on things. 0.25 seems to high to just leave though...especially as it COULD rise over the next 24 hours.

 

[ALW]

Andy is incorrect.

In what way? If the filter is cycled/part cycled then the bacteria inside the filter will still process the ammonia and nitrites, if you keep doing water changes every day then are reducing the amount yes but at the same time taking away the food for the bacteria, and if it is only part cycled then stalling the cycling process.

 

[Curiosity101]

I explained why... but to explain again...

Fish are constantly producing ammonia. So constantly feeding the bacteria.
When there is ammonia at testable levels in the aquarium it means the bacteria aren't coping with the bioload yet.
IE. The fish are creating ammonia faster than the bacteria can process it...so even if you did a 100% water change then very soon (within an hour) after there would be a reading of ammonia in the tank again.

It'd probably be too small for the api test kit to register, but it will be present. The fish only need to be creating a small amount of waste more than the bacteria can handle for the bacteria to be able to multiply.
The fish must be creating more otherwise there would be a 0 ammonia reading in the tank.

Therefore doing a large water change does nothing to slow the bacterias growth. As the fish are still creating waste faster than the bacteria can cycle it, and the fish are always creating waste. All that doing a water change does is protect the fish from unneccesary damage.

Hope that had made it clear for you.

 

[waterdrop]

I could not have said this as well as C101 just said it, very clear writeup.

I do think that the easiest way to get a grasp on this common misunderstanding is using the explanation she has just given, that we all know a full load of fish are putting out a healthy amount of ammonia and yet in a perfectly running mature aquarium we always see our ammonia and nitrite readings testing as zero.

There's a whole micro-world of activity, if you will, down in the small numbers our kits don't register. Not only do the bacteria live on it but the planted tank folks are quite familiar with what a big role it can play in algae!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[yoz0807]

Thanks peeps,
I enjoy reading and learning from discussions like this where people explain properly, in detail why they believe thier account to be correct.

It all makes sense to me..... However.....................

When I got home and did my tests
Ph - 7.6
amm - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 40

Soooooo.....

No water change tonight and test again in the morning


Unless anyone suggests otherwise

 

[Curiosity101]

If they've already caught up, which they must've if ammonia is now 0, then no need for a water change. But do keep doing the full range of tests daily for the next week or so, just to make sure things stay stable.

By the way, out of interest, have you tested your tap water for nitrates? Just wondering cause although 40ppm isn't bad, unless your tapwater is say...20ppm, you should probably be aiming to keep it a bit lower than that.
Like I said, nothing bad about 40ppm, but it's on the upper boundary of what is considered 'good', so I thought you might be interested.

Ps. Thanks WD, I wasn't sure if my explanation would only make sense to me...lol. However clear the understanding is in my head...doesn't always come out that well when I type

 

[yoz0807]

Cheers c101 ( and others)
I will be keeping an eye on the water stats in the future and particularly over the next week or two.

I tested the tap water tonight funnily enough. nitrates were 5-10 ppm ish.
I thought 40 ppm was ok
what do you reckon I should be aiming for?

thanks again for your help and input.


By the way, your answers have always been clear, to the point and easy to understand.
Thanks again

 

[Curiosity101]

With tap water nitrates of 10 I would aim to keep the tank at 20-30ppm

40 is ok, like I said, it's just that it's sorta top level of the 'ok' boundary.

Sorta goes...
0-10 - Risking BGA (Blue green algae), this is something I'm suffering from at the mo. My tank is at my parents house because I'm going to Uni, and my dad doesn't always remember to dose it with fertiliser... Reason mine is so low is because my tap water reads 3ppm of nitrates, and my fish don't create enough waste to keep levels high enough after the plants have absorbed what they need. My tank reading are normally about 5ppm if not lower without fertiliser

10-40 - Fine

40-100 - Wont cause too much harm to most fish, but can cause appetite loss, stress etc (and some sensitive species such as discus and german blue rams would perish at these sorts of levels)

100+ - Dangerous

 

[waterdrop]

Nitrate tests, though often inaccurate, are an inexpensive and accepted way of doing a little check on how well your gravel-clean-water-changing is doing at keeping your freshwater tank at a good balance. We strive for 5,10,15 or 20 ppm *above* whatever our tapwater nitrate level is. Thus, a typical worst case scenerio is 20ppm nitrates in the (London?, LOL) water and sort of a worst case of not great but decent tank cleaning of an added 20ppm would give you the 40ppm outer limit we often see. So if you have zero nitrates in your water, you'd want to be seeing between 5 and 20 as a number that's a good mark for your maintenance.

Perhaps the most important fundamental about this "test" to understand is that the Nitrate is serving as the "canary in the coal mine" warning about "bad water" so to speak. If the Nitrate is getting out of hand, then so might be hundreds of other trace metals and organic molecules that we don't want in there any more than we want extra nitrate(NO3) in there. These other trace metals and organics might be too expensive or too time consuming for us to test as opposed to testing Nitrate, so we just test nitrate and use it as our "indicator chemical."

Another thing I must just put in for completeness is that Nitrate itself varies a lot in how "bad" it is for different species or different "worries" in the tank. Some species (perhaps German Blue Rams, GBRs for instance) really can't tolerate much NO3 at all, whereas for many species 400ppm wouldn't bother them and for some catfish that specialize in living in the bottom of filthy rivers, 1000ppm would be ok! But that's never an excuse to let your tank go because there are just too many other things we don't want to build up in our water.

[And, just to add something for the back of your mind and keep things complicated, lol, there are some things that, yes, *are* desirable to have built up in aquarium water. There are NPT setups (Natural Planted Tank systems, a type of advanced specialized hobby thing lets just say) that take advantage of things that build up from not doing too many water changes... so there are advance areas of the hobby where people are playing with ideas quite different from our everyday "good habits" of beginner aquarium keeping!]

~~waterdrop~~

 

[yoz0807]

WHooaaahh......

My brain is starting to ache

I am not at all keen on plastic plants and as such I have been hoping to have a reasonably well planted aquarium.
In the past I have stuck with java fern and the like as they are Very easy to keep, but I am hoping to get a little more adventurous.

Still, one thing at a time

 

[waterdrop]

Don't get me started on plants...