Nitrate Levels High

[mwalsh1969]

Hi
Can anyone help me please.
Me and the wife bought a second hand 100 litre tank 2 months ago.
I spoke to the guy in the pet shop and he told me to cycle tohe tank with no fish for 2 weeks. I did that.
We bought 4 fish fo it. 3 Mollys and one blue fighting fish cause I liked the look of it.
Since then we have had nothing but problems. The fighting fish ended up in the pump and burnt itself on the heater. Dont know how. The top of the pump is 30mm above the water. Since then 2 mollys died and I wnet to the pet shop and had the water tested again. He said the nitrate levels were to high ( purple on the test ) Have transfered the surviving fish to a freinds tank. That was 7 weeks ago. I have been doing a 20% water change every 2 days and the water is still not fit for any fish.
Has anyone got any suggestions please.

 

[wolfwolf]

How do you know that your water is not fit for fish? Are you using an ammonia source to feed the beneficial bacteria? Do you have nitrate in your tap water? Better question... do you have a liquid based test kit? If not get an APi master kit. You need to test for ammonia, nitrite and Nitrate. Nitrate most likely did not kill your fish. After two weeks you probably still had ammonia and nitrite in your tank. THEY WILL kill fish at high levels.

Don't let the fish store sell you stuff that you do not need. They already got you for 4 fish.

Most importantly do research and surf this forum. Your fish and your wallet will appreciate it. The the pinned articles in the new to the hobby section. It will explain fishless cycling and other need to know things to have fun in this hobby. Good luck

 

[mwalsh1969]

Thanks a lot for the info. I have had a look through a lot of the postings with similar problems, and I am now wondering if the guy in the pet shop should just stick to selling rabbits.
He has said that the PH and ammonia levels are fine in the tank just the nitrate levels are very high.
I am going to get a test kit for myself and test the tap water.
It looks as though all I can do if the water is fine is keep cycling the tank every 2 days at 20% untill the levels drop. Is this right or is there another way.
The wife has just got some stuff called AmQuel Plus. It says it removes all this harmfull stuff from the water. Will this work or is it just another time waster?

 

[arobinson1984]

I'm guessing the levels that are high are nitrITE not nitrATE, its sounds like your lfs was using an API master kit and the nitrITE test goes purple when nitrITE levels are high.

Get yourself an API freshwater master liquid testing kit, and have a read of the fishless cycling guide in the beginners section of this forum, you will need some pure ammonia but this will be explained in the guide

Andy

 

[Bobtastic]

In the Nutrafin Mini Master test kit both the Nitrite and Nitrate tests go a purply colour but either test kits are good.

I would also suggest reading throught the Beginners Resource Center as there is extremely useful information in there. As you have rehome/relocated the existing fish that you had I guess you are trying to do a Fishless Cycling.

You will need to be clear if you mean NitrITE or NitrATE. NitrATEs are not as toxic to fish as NitrITEs (but they are still toxic if extremely high). The only way to reduce NitrATEs is to do water changes, the more water you change, the more NitrATEs you get rid of. That is assuming that your tap water is free of NitrATEs.

It sounds like you are just leaving the tank and changing some of the water ever couple of day. Are you adding anything into the tank to replicate the fish waste? The idea of cycling the tank is to grow fish waste eating/processing bacterial in your filter. It you don't have any fish in the tank there is nothing to generate the waste (which is Ammonia) for the bacteria to feed on. So just leaving the tank running without any fish in or adding any ammonia wont actually do anything.

Hope you've found the posts helpful, cos the ppl on here really know there stuff (I'm still new and learning!).