Water Change

Ozzy Ozborne

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Epworth,Near Doncaster UK
I have been running with a fish in cycle for 7 weeks now and the daily water test results for the last week have remained at :
Ammonia Nil
Nitrite<0.3
PH 7.5
I do not have a liquid nitrate but the paper dip test reads fine

Do I need to do another water change and if so when and how much?...........Or should I leave it until the tests change?

Thanks
 
I would do a 25% water change every 7 days that way none of the pollutants should build up to a dangerous level.
 
if youre fish in cycling you should be doing daily water changes until all ammonia and nitrite is at 0 for 24 hours, and nitrates rise
 
Its a little unusual to still be seeing that trace of nitrite(NO2) after 7 weeks of fish-in cycling! Let's hope that's not an indication that you are overstocked for your filter capacity!

A reasonable way to proceed in my opinion would be to perform nice thorough deep gravel cleans when its convenient for you and certainly at least every weekend and hopefully one weeknight. If you go slow and work at the gravel clean then at least 50-70% of the tank water should go out and that would be great too, working the nitrates(NO3) out of there as much as possible. The N-Bacs tend to like a low-nitrate environment to keep their development from begin inhibited. Once their colony gets good and strong it won't matter anymore, but for now it might help.

If this is not effective at finalizing your fish-in cycle (you know its complete when you get double-zeros for two days without changing any water) then you should post back here for diagnostics as we would have to suspect something else wrong I would think.

Your pH looks good. How about your hardness? Do you know whether your tap water happens to be extremely soft? If that were so, you might not have the little bit of calcium in your water that the N-Bacs like to use. Likewise for Fe(Iron), they use a trace of that too and if your tank were bare with no plants or plant fertilizer its possible there might not be that bit of iron they could use. Those are unlikely and small things but I was just trying to think of all the possibilities.

~~waterdrop~~
 

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