Not sure how to feel...

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
fishboy87

fishboy87

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Dec 15, 2010
Messages
365
Location
elmont/valley stream, long Island, New York
So after my moving my tank from my gf house to my apartment.. I decided to to clean the tank.. Bringing the tank to my apartment I nearly drain the tank to about less that 25percent of water . I left all the gravel with some water in there... I replaced the water with all fresh water when I got it to my apartment. So that was a water change in of itself but I didn't do any gravel cleaning... So now today I cleaned the canister and I siphoned most of the gravel to give the tank a good cleaning... Now tonight after work I wanted to check the nitrate levels... I wasn't very pleased ... It's was looking like at least 40ppm... Why ? It's kind of like two majors water changes with a week span..,,, should this have dropped the nitrate levels ... I checked the nitrate level in between the water changes and it pretty much stayed the same... how can that be??
 
Did you follow the instructions correctly and shake the bottles/test tubes? Did you also wait the 5 minutes? Maybe it's your tap water.That's all I could think of.
 
fishboy87 said:
Yea I did all of that... What can I do about the tap water????i use the water conditioner...
Click to expand...

I think Mafooj means have you tested your tapwater for nitrates? It's possible that the source of the nitrates is not in your tank at all, which would be worth knowing.
 
fishboy87 said:
I just tested the tap water from my apartment... It's read 0ppm.. Now I confused!!!??
Click to expand...

Well, that is good news, as dealing with nitrates in tapwater is a major pain.

I'm guessing stirring up substrate brought up a lot of nitrates. Hopefully doing more big water changes will solve that and things will settle back to normal after that.
 
fishboy87 said:
So after my moving my tank from my gf house to my apartment.. I decided to to clean the tank.. Bringing the tank to my apartment I nearly drain the tank to about less that 25percent of water . I left all the gravel with some water in there... I replaced the water with all fresh water when I got it to my apartment. So that was a water change in of itself but I didn't do any gravel cleaning... So now today I cleaned the canister and I siphoned most of the gravel to give the tank a good cleaning... Now tonight after work I wanted to check the nitrate levels... I wasn't very pleased ... It's was looking like at least 40ppm... Why ? It's kind of like two majors water changes with a week span..,,, should this have dropped the nitrate levels ... I checked the nitrate level in between the water changes and it pretty much stayed the same... how can that be??
Click to expand...

You accidentally over cleaned :(
You may have killed off too much BB.

Cleaning gravel AND your Canister on the same day ? Your tank is trying to Cycle again.

I never clean gravel and filter together and I only rinse my filter pads in used tank water or conditioned tap water.

Sorry. I think we've all done it at least once.
 
You're making progress. Totally stirring and cleaning the gravel could have put your NO3 off the charts. It's just taking several WC's to get it all the way done to =< 10ppm. OS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

P
None of my fish are eating. What should I do?
Replies
5
Views
237
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
F
Cloudy water after cleaning!
Replies
5
Views
1K
huma-huma
huma-huma
B
How do i fix my cycle?? I’m begging for help.
Replies
2
Views
559
Effluorescence
E
L
Purple algae purgatory
Replies
1
Views
158
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
T
Perpetually high nitrates no matter what I do! Dozens of water changes later.
Replies
11
Views
1K
Andy Sager
Andy Sager

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom