Tested Water First Time

[Ceres]

I don't know what is high and what isn't?! My fish are platies and my strips test like this

Nitrate
Nitrate
Hardness
Alkalinity
pH

I changed 50% last night and added the aqua safe like normal but the water is cloudy and the test strips read out as follows:

Nitrate 10
Nitrate 3.0
Hardness 300
Alkalinity 300
pH 7.8

I do have some correct pH for Community Tanks 7.0. Would that help? It says it also helps with ammonia(btw, which reading is ammonia?).

 

[indir-emir]

The test strips are less accurate then liquid tests are, from what i hear and reserach. But either way u need to get ur Nitrite (notice the "I") to 0, water changes will help you with this. I also suggest you get yourself an ammonia test also and test that for everyone also Good luck

Ammonia should be 0, Nitrite should be 0, Nitrates about 10ppm above your tap water nitrate level. Thats for an ideal tank reading

Regards,
Indir

 

[Ceres]

Okay, I thought these strips would have tested that.. I'll have to wait til payday. What can I do to lower the nitrate?

 

[indir-emir]

I suggest you see if your acutaly talking about NitrAtes or NitrItes. One has an A and one has an I, so be careful my friend.

As i said, try water changes to get it down. 50% should be enough, then wait about an hour or two before you test again to see if it has gone down

Regards,
Indir

 

[Ceres]

Nitrate 10
Nitrite 3.0
Hardness 300
Alkalinity 300
pH 7.8

Okay I didn't see the difference.. lol I did change their water and I realized I never cleaned their gravel the whole month I've had them. So I did that as well. While doing it I noticed quite a lot of uneaten fish flakes floating around so maybe I am feeding them too much! I'm going to cut back a little. The water is still cloudy but they seem happier than before the water change.

 

[indir-emir]

How much water did you change? Do a good clean for the gravel if there was alot of flakes, try to get rid of them all. Them rotting will cause dangerous things like ammonia

Also if there was alot of food, try to feed only enough for them to consume within about a minute or two, and only once or twice a day for a while.

What is the size of your tank and how many platies have you got?

Regards,
Indir

 

[Ceres]

I changed about 40% of the water, I had started before I even read your post(I was afraid of changing too much because I did just change it yesterday). It's a 10 gallon and 5 platies.

 

[Fisses]

when i had problems with my tank cycling, i did the same as you and swished all my gravel around and the amount of rubbish that was in there was un belivable! the filter soon sucked it all up though

all that decaying causes a lot of ammonia

 

[LauraFrog]

Okay, basically what you have now is fish in a tank that is not cycled. There are pinned topics in this board (new to the hobby) that explain the nitrogen cycle. Basically, fish produce ammonia. You need bacteria in your tank that convert the ammonia to nitrite (judging by your readings this is already happening) and then another species that converts the nitrite to nitrate. Both ammonia and nitrite are extremely toxic and harmful to fish, and if your nitrites are high it means your ammonia probably is too as your bacterial population is not large enough. Read the pinned topics cause I don't have time to type it all out again. Sorry.

What you need to do is to do large water changes daily to remove as much of the ammonia and nitrites as possible, and some accurate test kits would be good because strips are notoriously inaccurate. You really need an ammonia test. The aim when fish in cycling (what you're going through now because you have fish in a tank that is not cycled ie there are not enough bacteria) is to keep both ammonia and nitrites below 0.25ppm at all times to avoid damage to the fish.

It's a good thing you have platys as they are very tough and among the best fish to use for a fish-in cycle. You can keep the ones you've got, but DO NOT buy any more fish until you have cycled the tank. Doing big water changes is essential and it won't harm the fish at all provided that you use dechlorinator each time. Don't clean the filter as this is where the bacteria grow and they need to be disturbed as little as possible.

 

[waterdrop]

Totally agree with Laura! Very well said! You could re-read that post several times and all the different sentences are accurate and useful.

Ceres is in a Fish-In cycle, needs lots of large water changes and is probably over-feeding and not getting good enough gravel-cleans during the water changes. I'd just go with Laura's post there for guidance.

~~waterdrop~~