What's Up With My Stats?

[fshinggrl]

I guess what I am concerned about is my Nitrates! My ammonia level is 0. My PH is about 8. My nitrates are 160.

?? I have 3 yo yo loaches & 4 zebra loaches in tank.

Oh, it's a 75g tank.

 

[FishyWishie]

Right about now i'd be doing an insanely large water change to get those back under control

 

[fshinggrl]

I did a 40% water change yesterday and just did a 50% water change an hour ago (12 hours from the last one). Thanks!

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

If you have not got a moderate-heavily planted tank with "medium/fast growers", or you do not do one or two 25%+ water changes per week, all the ammonia will end up creating a higher concentration of nitrates.

Not all the nitrates will come from food you add ending up being converted into nitrate, if you use tap water. For instance, my tap water nitrate level can vary anywhere between 20 and 40mg/l, but fortunately my plants use ~5mg/l and so the less toxic nitrate drops to very low levels over a matter of days.

160mg/l is getting towards "concerning" levels, albeit a lot of less sensitive fish can cope with upto something like 300mg/l I believe... For what its worth, I would firstly test the nitrate levels in your tap water and if its less than say 50mg/l, I would say do a 50% water change.

How much food are you feeding these loaches? Generally, except for the two days preceeding my fishes' "fasting day" on Tuesdays, I try to add the equivalent of the eyes of each of my fish. Apparently, this "ballpark" measuring is a good guess to the size of the stomach of most fish!

 

[Dinky Stig]

Out of interest, which nitrate test kit are you using and how old is it? Chances are it's giving you a duff reading, as they get older the accuracy decreases, but as above I would do a 50% water change just to be safe, it seems a bit odd that a tank of that size with such stocking would give readings like that, unless you're adding a lot of food.

 

[fshinggrl]

I think I was adding a wee bit too much food (for the record). I got the AFI liquid test (isn't that the one everyone here uses) less than a year ago. The 160 was about 14 hours after my first bad reading (hadn't tested in a week prior).

 

[Harlequins]

With the nitrate liquids,have you made sure you give them a real good shake,especially the second bottle,shake it so hard for a good few mins until your arm is literally falling off,then do the test again.
The regeants in the nitrate liquid test kit do settle in the bottle of the bottle and can give out false reading.
If its still showing 160 then do a large w/c to bring it back down

 

[fshinggrl]

Yes, I've been totally overfeeding them. I tested again and also tested nitrites and the both were bad (this 6 hours after doing a 50% water change). So, I did a 75% water change. Hopefully that helped. I'll test again tomorrow morning. Thanks for the input. My bad. I should know better.

 

[Dinky Stig]

What I would do is cut a length of hosepipe and siphon the water out and suck up any much off the bottom of the substrate, to stop it from rotting down further increasing the nasties.

 

[waterdrop]

Deep gravel cleaning is usually a double-win in situations like these because no only are you getting the debris (which will break down and make more nitrate eventually) but the nitrate itself tends to hang with the gravel and filter. Doing overlapping gravel-clean-water-changes can be very effective, where a 50% follows pretty closely behind a previous 50% water change.

You can use a kitchen timer to see whether you are feeding what they can eat within a 2 to 3 minute session perhaps 6 days a week. Cold-blooded animals don't need lots of food energy to produce body heat like we do so its hard for our emotions and instincts to give us the right messages with them, we tend to think they must be starving.

Have you been monitoring your nitrite(NO2) levels at all?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[fshinggrl]

Have you been monitoring your nitrite(NO2) levels at all?

~~waterdrop~~

Yep. Sorry, I missed this response. I have been testing and my nitrite levels are bad too. On Tuesday I did another big water change (making sure I disturbed all the gravel. I got some cycle and some media to try to help with my stats.

I tested this morning and my stats are still not that good.

I don't understand why my HUGE water changes aren't helping. I'd take any and all suggestions right now. Thank you!
p.s. Yes, my nitrites are not good as well. My ammonia was up to .50 as well.

 

[OldMan47]

Lets start at the beginning. A 50% water change is not a big one, although it will seem big while you are lugging water. You need to cut way back on feeding and do enough truly large water changes to get the nitrite under control. Depending on the amount of fish in your uncycled tank, you may well be looking at doing at least daily 80 or 90% water changes to control nitrites. Until you control nitrites completely without doing a water change, there is not much point to testing nitrates. Until that point, the water changes to control nitrites at less than 0.25 ppm will easily be enough to take care of any excess nitrates.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Is there any chance that the filter sponges are smothered in excess food (which are going to be converted to nitrate eventaully), so each time you do a water change, you aren't really dealing with the biggest problem?

Perhaps next time you do another big water change, remove the filter sponge and give it a gentle rinse in the tank water you just removed

 

[fshinggrl]

Thanks!! My nitrates are lower today. My Nitrites are still a bit high. I did change out the filter almost a week ago (blue thing). Thanks for your continued advice. I will do big(ger) water change soon.

 

[fshinggrl]

Yes, oldman... they 'seemed' like big water changes to me!

I did a 85-90% water change tonight. Let's hope it worked. Thank you.