re-cycling

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Jgeezer1986

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
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Going through a re-cycle. Ammonia levels are running up toward 1.0 ppm... but not quite. Off to do a water change to get it down. At what level do you all think i need to worry about ammonia poisoning?

Saturday night i did a 50% to try to get my nitrates down and cleaned my filters in water i took out of the tank.. Could that have caused it?

What levels should i be looking for. All the test kits i used before were apparent wrong. (i think) Ammonia should never go above 1.0ppm and Nitrites should never go above 0.50 ppm correct? And also the Nitrates should never go about 20ppm?
 
Ammonia should never go above 0.0ppm. worse case they should never go above 0.25ppm.'

Sounds like you are in the middle of a mini cycle. Just keey up with pwc's
 
If it goes any higher, think about emergency water purging. Discomfort starts at .25ppm but true poisoning begins at your levels.
 
What started this? did something die? did you get chlorine in the water?
 
Ideally, ammonia and nitrite levels should never be above zero. Nitrates are a little more flexible. I personally don't like them above 20ppm, but I'd probably give you up to 40ppm before you start seeing health problems with your fish.

I have a hunch that you didn't use a dechlorinator when you did your PWC. The chlorine/chloramine kill off your nitrifying bacteria, resulting in your mini cycle. Be sure to add dechlorinator before you start refilling the tank and don't fill directly into the filter. This will kill off your bacteria before the dechlorinator has a chance to act.
 
Saturday i did about a 50%. I also bought the api master and stopped using my others. The other tests were telling my my nitrates were only 20ppm, but when i tested it with the master , it told me they were more like 80, so i changed the water.

Also when i changed the water , i cleaned my filters out, but i used the tank water i took out to do it...

I also added a couple fish on saturday, but i got them before i realized my tank was so far out. The ammonia and nitrtites still read 0 on saturday though. There were only some small blood finned tetras and two powder blue dwarf gouramis. I also got rid of my male blue gourami. He was too aggressive


After the water change last night , the ammonia came down to between .25 and .50 and nitrites were still at 0. waiting for the nitrites to spike.

Edit: Used stress coat in the water. I put it in a 5 gal bottle with the water before i ever add it to the tank.
 
Perameters:
Ammonia 0.25
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 5.0-10.0
pH 6.4

So the Ammonia is dropping, but the nitrites are not rising. In order for the Ammonia problem to be solved, wouldnt i have to see the nitrites rising?

The tank was well established with Ammonia and Nitrites at 0.0. Would the nitrogen cycle just skip the nitrite stage this time?

Im going to test again tonight before bed and if the Ammonia is still low, im going to let the tank go and see what it does. At what level of ammonia would i want to consider a change now? I dont want to inhibit the cycling process too much by changing too much water if it does not need it.

I believe the combination of cleaning the filters too well and adding fish at the same time caused this. I cleaned them in a bucket of water taken from the tank , but i cleaned them pretty aggressivly , and wringing them out when i was done. Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Also i was thinking about maybe start using stress zyme in lieu of stress coat. Any suggestions on that topic. Thanks in advance
 
I dont add any stress anything. if you are trying to dechlor, use prime or another specific water conditioner. and dont worry about changing the water too much.

the tank will not skip nitrite, and that looks like a symptom of a cycle. I concur with Big Jim.

What fish are in the tank right now?
 
2 angels
2 blue gourami
2 powder blue dwarf gourami
6 tiger barbs
4 zebras tetras
6 blood finned tetras
2 mollies
2 swordtails
 
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