Die off! Hellpp!!

[Mlonghorns]

Okay so I have a 43 gal tank with 10 cardinal tetras, 1 dwarf gourami, and 3 German blue rams. 5 days ago I switched my filter from a hob marineland penguin 350 to an aquaflow technologies aef-302 canister filter. I transferred my biomedia from the hob to the canister filter and now my numbers are blowing up. I lost 3 cardinals in 2 days and my gbrs are all gasping at the top. I’ve been doing 50% wc and adding prime. Before my last wc my numbers were:

Ammonia: 1
Nitrite: .25-.5
Nitrate: 10
pH: 7.4

Would it be a good idea to add the hob filter back to try and build up more bacteria colonies? Any suggestion are welcome! I really don’t want to lose my fish! Thanksss

 

[coralbandit]

Yea I would run both for a couple weeks.
Hopefully you did not clean out the HOB...

 

[Mlonghorns]

Unfortunately the hob was cleaned out and has been out and dried for 5 days so none of those colonies will still be there but I took all of the bio balls and ceramics that I had in the filter and transferred them to the canister when I switched.

My thought process is to have both filters running and pulling more water and maybe the colonies will start to build up in both filters spreeding up the process of fixing the cycle? The tank has been sufficiently cycled for over a year now with 0 issues so I thought there would be plenty of colonies in the bio filters that I transferred over but clearly I was mistaken

Update: after the a 50% wc, adding prime, and running the hob for an hour or so, my gbrs have settled and are swimming back towards the bottom level. Good news but I’m assuming the ammonia and nitrite will just rise again by tomorrow and add to their stress

 

[coralbandit]

The prime detoxifies for 48 hours..It will still register on test..