Water Stats

[freerunner416]

Hi,

I have a discus tank and check my stats quite a lot. Most of the time they are pretty stable. Recently i have noticed the Discus have been gasping a little. I have a 60 gallon tank running a tetratec 1200 external filter. The tank is quite heavily stocked with 4 discus, 10 young plecs and some dither fish, but this has never been a problem. I water change ever couple of days (25%) and do 50% change at the weekend. The filter is cleaned out every 3weeks to a month.

My Ph has always beenbetween 6.6 and 7.0.

When i tested the tank before a water change at the weekend i had these results:
Ammonia is nil
Nitrate = between 0 and the next marker up on the chart.
Nitrite = between 0 and the next marker up on the chart.

Does this sound correct?

I thought my Nitrite should be slightly higher? If so how do you raise it?

I am just double checking as i have talked myself into worrying about it!

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[smegforbrains]

NitrITE should be zero, NitrATE should be less than 40.


It's possible your tank is lacking oxygen because the water is too warm. What temperature is it set at?


If the temperature is within the recommended guidelines, you may need to add an airstone to put more oxygen into the water.

 

[waterdrop]

Having nitrite(NO2) show up in any amount when testing a mature cycled aquarium is a concern. Barring some strange accident, the first thing one would question would be whether the fish load has exceeded the capacity of the biofilter. This is a very real possibility in a tank with big fish like that. I'd continue morning and evening tests to establish more data. If the nitrite problem continues and is not traceable to an accident that killed the bacteria, then you're going to need to plan for additional biomedia volume.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[freerunner416]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your input. The nitrite level has gone done to zero and the nitrate is still sitting just over zero so i take it everything is fine. I am looking into adding an airstone but have moved my outlet pipe nearer the surface to give more aggitation up there. Hopefully that will help a little.

Cheers