Water Levels

[boris1981]

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Hi All,

I recently started my tank, and after a week we tested the levels are they were spot on, they were tested by 2 different shops.
We brouht a couple of fish, however had to go away for a couple of days and when I got back 1 of my fish had died, tested the levels again and they are slightly high,
P.H 7.6
Am 0.25 mg/l
NO3 5 mg/l
NO2 1.0 mg/l

I have done a 25%water change, when would I expect these levels to drop, I have only been feeding the once a day, however the fish that died could have been dead for a couple of days.

Is there any thing else other than waiting I can do to drop these levels.

All the fish in the tank look happy and all eat.

Thanks

 

[glolite]

Have a read of the pinned topic at the top of this section of the forums, called "New to the hobby". There you will find articles on fishless and fish in cycles.

Basically you need to keep on water changing at 25% at a time until your nitrite and ammonia levels are zero.

 

[arobinson1984]

I think you'll need to do larger water changes than 25%.

In a fish in cycle situation I'd recommend more like 60/70% water changes otherwise your ammonia/nitrite levels will raise faster than 25% changes will be lowering them.

Andy

 

[cowboy507]

Have a read on the topics on my signature. You seem to be in a fish-in cycle.

These are a pain, i just recently finished mine and i am never doing another!

your goals are this:
keep ammonia and nitrItes below .25 ppm
nitrAtes dont matter because you should be doing enough water changes to keep this down.
Keep the fish alive and living long is your main goal.

i had to do a 50% water change everyday for the first 2-3 weeks, then i lowered that to 50% every other day
you will need to check ammonia and nitrItes everyday, if they are above .25 ppm do another water change about an hour later.
check ammonia an hour after changing water to see if it went down.
stay patience, DO NOT add many more fish, if possible take them back and do a fish less
if you can get some mature filter media, this helps speed the process of cycles faster.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with Andy. You'll probably need several large 70% changes (always leave an hour between changes) more to get the nitrite(NO2) down than the ammonia, but it will be helping with both poisons. You'll need to use good water changing technique, which means using a gravel-cleaning siphon and cleaning the gravel as you remove the 70% and then conditioning the return water (a conditioner product that removes the chlorine or chloramines and changes the ammonia into ammonium like Seachem Prime or Amquel+, these would be good choices in this situation, but use any conditioner you have) and roughly temperature matching (use your hand to be sure the return water feels like it matches the tank water temperature.)

After 2 or 3 of these big changes, you can drop down to 50% change per day unless you've been able to pick up a good liquid kit. You need a good liquid-reagent based test kit to give you feedback during your fish-in cycle. Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. The other thing this will do is give you a tool as a beginner to better understand these core skills of the hobby to help you in the future.

Once you've got a decent kit, your goals change. Your new goal will be to use the kit to help you figure out what percentage and frequency of water changes will help your water to remain mostly clear of ammonia and nitrite(NO2.) You want the ammonia and nitrite to not get above 0.25ppm before you can catch it and perform another water change. Most people establish two times a day about 12 hours apart, say 7am and 7pm or something like that, and just try various percentages that are a bit different from the 50% changes you did to get you started. The amounts of waste the fish put out and your tank size and various other things will make your situation and pattern different from everyone else, you could find out you need less water changing or more, but you need to keep those poisons low.

Why? Because ammonia, even in small amounts causes permanent gill damage, leading to a shortened fish life or death and nitrite(NO2), even in small amounts, causes destruction of the fish blood hemoglobin protein, leading to permanent nerve and brain damage, showing up as suffocation, shortened fish life and death. All these things are happening to you because you didn't have access to the somewhat arcane info about how it takes a couple of months, really, to prepare the "biofilter" function in a filter prior to the filter really working and being ready for fish. Its rarely evident to beginners that there's this other unusual thing that goes on with filters, because they think a filter is just there to, well, filter stuff! In fact it is, but that's actually a lesser function than this amazing "biofiltration" function that is at the root of our hobby.

Good luck, you've found a great place to learn the ins and outs of the hobby and I hope your fish survive and the tank gets better!

~~waterdrop~~