Hello I can not get my nitrite level down. It stays around 1 even though I do at least a quarter water (3 gallons) change everyday.
My tank has been going around 1 month
I have 12 fish (3 penguin tetra, 3 zebra danio, 3 neon tetra, 1 black widoow tetra, 1 golden barb and 1 sailfin plec) in my 60cm x 30cm x 30cm fish tank
I feed my fish every 2 days.
My ammonia level reads 0.0, ph 7.6-7.8, water temp 24C and nitrate level goes from 0-5 depending on water changes
Has anyone got any ideas what I`m doing wrong. Is it that I`m
Changing my water too much/often.
Is there to many fish for my small tank (LFS said I could put more fish if I wanted)
Feeding fish too much/often
None of my fish are dying and seem to be swimming around happy enough, but my plec changes colour. He is a real dark colour 1st thing in the morning but he goes lighter after a while.
Thanks for any help or advice you can give me
A quarter water change will make very little difference to your nitrite levels - it will only reduce them by a quarter and they'll pop right back up in a few hours.
When people are having ammonia or nitrite problems, they need to do very large water changes every day. Test your water morning and evening and change quite a substantial amount of water of you see the nitrate is above zero. I do 75% water changes. This will take out most of the nitrite and give you some time before it builds up again.
Feeding your fish less will help, as they'll produce less ammonia and there will be less ammonia to become nitrite. I would feed every 2-3 days for a little while. Fish can quite easily go without food for several days, if not a couple of weeks.
Your stock won't be helping. Your tank has only been set up for a month and the who cycling process takes around 6 weeks. This means that as you are cycling with fish in the tank, you should have got a few fish to start with (say, 3 zebra danios) and not added anymore fish until your tank was 100% cycled and you had no ammonia and nitrite. After that point, you should have added small numbers of fish every week or so, while checking your water stats. It sounds like your lfs have given you bad advice.
At the moment you have too many fish, but it's a manageable level
once your tank is cycled. However, the problem isn't how many fish long term, it's what the fish are:
3 penguin tetra - should be in shoals of 6
3 zebra danio - should be in shoals of 6
3 neon tetra - should be in shoals of 6
1 black widoow tetra - should be in shoals of 6
1 golden barb - should be in shoals of 6
1 sailfin plec - will hugely ourgrow your tank and it will not be a case of getting a slighty bigger tank. This monster needs a
6 foot long, 100 gallon+ tank. Most people know whether they can get that or not so if there is little hope of you exchanging your sofa for a fish tank, rehome it.
If you got all your fish up to groups of 6 you would have a lethal number of fish in that tank - it just isn't do-able. I would strongly recommend you take the golden barb and the danios back, as they both get to around 2.5 inches as adults and your tank isn't big enough to handle schools of fish that size. I would also take the black widow back as it's totally on it's own, and use the fewer fish to get you through your cycling phase. Then, you can add more neons and more penguins and give them good sized shoals, and also add some bottom swimmers to the tank, such as corydoras, shrimp or otocinclus. If you really want a plec, consider a small species such as bulldog/rubber lip plecs. I would suggest to avoid a bristlenose - even though they are a small species, they still get it about 5 inches and should be reserved for 3 foot + tanks. That's your choice though - I just wouldn't get a bristlenose.
You've mentioned that the shop says you can have more fish - we hear this a lot when people have been badly advised and ended up with a messy stock list. The shop wants your money. If you say to them " you just want my money", they'l;l of course deny it and try to justify why you can have 30 fish in a 60 litre tank, or whatever. However, you as the caring owner need to be aware of how your environment will affect your fish.
+ Shoaling fish need shoals. They really do. Even if they "look fine" shoaling with a different species, they are doing it out of desperation. They come from shoals of hundreds, if not thousands of the same species in the wild and that instinct to group with their own kind is very strong. It's verging on cruel to keep them in small groups of 1-3, IMO, and a lot of shops just don't care.
+ Fish need space and territories. What we think of as a "tank that needs some more life" isn't probably pretty good for the fish. Even the little ones need more space than we give them credit for. They need to be able to inhabit part of the tank without worrying about other fish encroaching on their territory and especially without worrying about fish they percieve as predatory. Craming too many fish into a tank is potentially fatal as the increased stress make getting diseases in the tank much easier.
+ Fish need plenty of appropriate decor to mimic a natural environment. Coloured/white gravels and un-natural ornaments can actually be dangerous, if looking at it from a stress perspective. Many fish are used to subdued lighting, dark gravel to camouflage against and loads of places to hide. The more decor you have, the more room is taken up but this is a good thing! It is much better to have a happy tank of a few fish tank to cram loads of species in to a sparsely decorated tank.
With all this in mind, you need to rely on yourself, your own research and science to make decisions aout your fish, and not shops who come up with arbitrary rules to make extra sales.
Here is the
Resource Centre - a lot of questions will be answered there before you need to ask them.
