saving grace

SO, I have a big long background story under the thread..."burning his gills?" I don't know if I should post there again or create this new thread...any thoughts on that let me know...

However, here is where I am at in my reading and what I have done since...

As I am trying to establish good bacteria I did a 40/50% water change on Tuesday, then I did a 25% change yesterday/Thursday. Things were OK but not great. The ammonia level was still really high like 1.5mg/l and the NitrIte was at about a .3mg/l.

I went to the fish store to get a replacement test kit as the one I had leaked out all it's product and was worthless.

SO...I got another kit and a NitrAte test kit. They also suggested and talked me into an "Ammo-chips" and silk "sock" to put into the filter. I did all this and came back and tested the water about two hours later...

Here are the results:
The NitrItes are now at least a 1.6mg/l
The NitrAtes are about a 5ppm
The Ammonia is now like a.25mg/l or less

Remeber this is a New tank and is two days shy of being a full two weeks old!
*Should I take the ammo chips out?
*Am I freaking out too much and "stalking" the tank too often and just need to be patient and wait for the tank to cycle?

I don't know what to do!

Thanks! Hope you can help calm my over-zealous energy for my 9 year old goldie!

penna32

well the "burning gills" is probably being caused by the ammonia ..

*ive never used ammonia chips butthey are used to get rid of ammonia

* well to me it sounds like your tank needs to be cycled, i dont know the fastest ways about cycling, but read BJP's "new race" post, he does a lot of cycling expirements

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Andyoybna

You should probably leave the ammonia chips in there, they'll get that down a little bit for you and after it absorbs all of the ammonia that it can it'll fill up with some bacteria.

It's good that you have a nitrate reading it shows that you're making some progress ammonia is a bit high still.... but that should start coming down, and your nitrites will rise a bit, probably to 5ppm, and then ammonia should be zero, and nitrite should fall to 0, and have just your nitrate which is what you are looking for.

Has the water got cloudy/milky yet? If not, don't freak out when it happens test the water before you do any water changes, that is a big sign of bacteria bloom and if you do a waterchange you are sucking a whole lot of good bacteria out of there.

BJP

You've already spent the money on the ammo chips so use them for now to help keep the ammonia levels low but if the ammonia disappears I'd take them out so they don't slow the development of the bacteria by eliminating the ammonia completely. Once they exhaust they would serve as bacterial housing locations but unless you want to leave them in permanently as such it would just be temporary housing meaning you'd be extracting some of the bacteria removing them later.

I'm not familiar with silk sock so I can't comment directly but the idea is since fish are present, you need to keep the ammonia and nitrite as low as possible but not removed entirely. That can usually be accomplished easily by simply giving the tank a 50% water change two days in a row while stopping all feeding. You control the ammonia level with the amount of fish food you feed and also the nitrite level the same way.

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saving grace

AWESOME! THANKS!

So how long does it take for the nitrIte to go down once it has spiked?

Reason being...since yesterday the ammonia is going way down like .25mg/l or less (even zero at one point) and the NitrIte level is like OFF THE CHART in a BAD way. I believe that the NitrAte level has also increased and is around a 20ppm today...

I took out that ammonia sock...it made me a little nervous since the tank is still in process....Oh well, I'll save it for my next tank or use it come other way!

Thanks again! Will talk soon!

BJP

It's hard to make an accurate guess. I've had tanks that finished completely in a bit over a week and I've had other tanks where the nitrite spike dragged on for two months. Generally though, when it does drop, it drops rapidly, from off a test kits range to zero in a day or three. The ammonia level always disappears first.

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