Water Test Question

[Ozzy Ozborne]

Hi,

My tank has been running for appox 8 weeks now and the Ammonia levels for the past few weeks have been zero.Ph has been 7.5 and Nittite has been <0.3.These tests have been done using Tetra liquid tests.
For the last 2 days i have notivced that the nitrite has gone up to +0.3
I have done a water change each day but it has not changed.......
I have run with a fish in cycle (advice from LFS..too late to stop!)

any advice with the nitrite results,or is this all part of the cycle?

Thanks

 

[minxfishy]

NitrIte will always take longer to go down than ammonia does, its also normal for it to take longer to show up in the cycle, as the ammonia eating bacteria grow, turning it into nitrIte, the only thing you can do is daily water changes and it will eventually go down to 0, you will start to see a rise in the nitrAtes which will indicate that the nitrIte bacteria is growing slowly.

 

[Ozzy Ozborne]

If the nitrite levels remain at +0.3 for a while during the cycle will this be a problem to the fish?

Thanks

 

[minxfishy]

Well any level of nitrIte is harmful to the fish, but you do need a trace to enable the bacteria to grow, keep it as low as possible until the cycle finishes.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with Minxfishy. If you're using a Nutrafin liquid test kit then I believe 0.3ppm will be the lowest trace color-match. That makes it the trace level you want as your max during fish-in cycling (bottom trace level or API kit is 0.25ppm so we often quote that number but its the same thing really.) So your goal is to adjust your water change percentage and frequency so that the traces you see of either ammonia or nitrite haven't risen above that level by the next time you test and can do another water change. That minimizes the amount of permanent nerve damage the nitrite can do via hemoglobin alteration.

As minx says, in any cycle the "nitrite spike" phase (peak of nitrite production without consequent reduction when graphed over weeks) comes -after- the buildup of ammonia reducing bacteria that happens early on.

The bacteria will have enough "food" during a fish-in cycle regardless of whether our crude little hobbyist test kits can measure it.

~~waterdrop~~