Should I Stop Doing Very Frequent Water Changes?

[darenshan54]

My water is getting cloudy, and there is some algae growing, my ammonia is about 0.25, nitite under 0.1, nitrate about 5. If i don't change the water the readings are the same, if i do the readings are the same. Btw my tank is planted. Been cycling with fish for about 2 weeks now. I have a 20 gallon with about 7fish in it. using cycle and stresszyme.

 

[loraxchick]

no! keep up the water changes until ammonia/ nitrite readings are 0.
you are getting cloudy water due to a bacterial bloom from the presence of ammonia. make sure you are doing a substrate clean when you syphon out the water for changing. feed fish sparingly until the tank cycles (every other day...they wont starve)...some more fast growing stem plants like elodea, wisteria, camboba would help a bit in keeping ammonia levels down. bottom line is keep up the water changes for the sake of the fish. water will likely be cloudy for a while. just bare with it.
cheers

 

[doggiebag]

did 2 fish in cycles and would say to keep the water changes going. You must keep the fish safe, that is a priority, so try to get the ammonia lower to 0 if possible, but never over 0.25 at least.
How big are the changes you are doing?
Have you tested the tap water?

If you do larger changes (50%+) then you should be seeing a drop in your stats, you may have to do a couple an hour or so apart to see a difference, Unless your tap water has similar properties (doubtful).......the cloudy water will be an alage bloom, this will go eventually, when you change water it just grows to cloud it again, but it will go soon (a few days to a week usually, did on mine) If the algae growth your getting is brown, this too is normal and you can just wipe it away, though it comes back quick. Once the tank cycles it does stop.......

I had to do daily changes of between 20% and 90% during my fish in cycles, the larger changes coming in the nitrite spike. My coldwater tank took 70 days to cycle and my tropical took about 34 days.....

 

[darenshan54]

is it weird im not seeing any nitrite at week 2

 

[reflexhunter]

you will probably see a nitrite jump pretty soon as your tank continues to cycle, you need to make sure that the declhoronater can detoxify ammonia,nitrite, and nitrate.

I use safe by seachem and I like it alot, the liquid form is called prime. gl

 

[OldMan47]

You are very early in the cycle process. If you were doing fishless, you might possibly be starting to see the first hint of an ammonia drop by now, so not seeing any nitrites yet is about what we should expect. The plants may be helping a bit with the ammonia levels but obviously are not able to do the job alone. You need to make up the difference by doing frequent and large enough water changes to control the ammonia.

 

[darenshan54]

all these water changes are draining my dechlorinator supplies.

 

[Harlequins]

what dechlorinator are you using?

I recommend seachem prime,its very concentrated and you only need a small amount,i bought mine from ebay £ 7.89 incl postage,it 250ml bottle and does 2500 gallons!!

 

[doggiebag]

I had the same issue when I was fish-in cycling, it was costing me a fortune in dechlorinator. I swapped from Tetra aquasafe to Tetra Pond Aquasafe, it is much stronger and you only need 0.5ml per 10litres, so lasts much longer and costs the same. I was buying the stuff every 2 weeks, so far the pond version has lasted 6 weeks and it is still half full.......

 

[ellena]

Yes, definitely swap to a concentrated dechlor If you read the sticky on cycling, it explains that fish start to suffer the effects of ammonia and nitrite over 0.25ppm. So water changes must be done to keep levels below this. If you do very frequent changes and the levels barely rise above 0ppm, you are giving the filter bacteria very little to feed on and grow. It's about striking a balance

 

[OldMan47]

I will go farther than Ellena. If you can measure any ammonia at all, there is more than enough to grow your bacterial colony larger. If there were not an excess, you would not be able to measure it. Keeping levels low enough that you have trouble measuring them means you have just enough for the bacteria to keep growing while not threatening your fish with levels too high. The only balance involved is to stop doing water changes when you just can't measure nitrites or ammonia at all.