3 weeks into my new tank and high levels of...

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mrcrazypants05

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
Messages
498
Location
Kansas City, KS
3 weeks into my new tank and high levels of Nitrite, Hardness, Alkalinity, and pH. Im sort of new to the whole aquarium thing so I can use all the great advice that you guys can give me. You can see the size of my tank and all the fish in it in my sig down below. Anyway, to get to the point of my post... Ive had my tank running for about 3 weeks now. I now have all the fish that im gonna get, but i might buy more danios and neons to make up after my water is right... I haven't changed my water yet, so I'm going to do that either tomorrow or sunday. One of the LFS sells reverse osmosis freshwater for $0.45 a gallon. Would it be okay to do like a 25% partial water change and add the LFS water to my water? I treated my water with chemicals before, but i didn't do anything to the hardness of the water. What are your suggestions for bringing down pH and alkalinity and nitrite. I believe its the nitrate thats the only thing that is real safe right now.
 
We do bumps once every 24 hours.. just a FYI..
I would just do a tap water change enough to get the nitrite down to the 2ppm range (though that might be high for your neons, they are not very tolerant of poor water conditions so they might all go before the nitrite faze of your cycle is over).. It should help with the PH and Hardness but Im guessing you likely have a rock, gravel, sand or some stone like product that is leaching causing your KH to go up.. you need to remove what ever it is (remove all stone like products if you dont have a likely culprit and acid test them all)...

acid test- using muriatic acid (bought at ace) *best* or vinegar *will do in a pinch* to drip on the stone in question to see if it bubbles.. if there are bubbles present then they are going to leach..
 
Okay. Sorry about the bump. Just a little excited and ready to get everything setup right for my fish. So are you saying I should remove all my gravel in the bottom of my tank while I do a water change? Other than the gravel I don't really have anything else in my tank except for some fake plants. A couple live plants that are just cheap hardy plants that I bought at wal-mart. I also have a couple of fake rock decorations I bought. Thanks for the advice so far.
 
I would take out a sample of the gravel and test it.. you might have to take it all out if its what is causing the KH to go up.. when you said "Alkalinity" you did mean KH right? If its just your PH going up that seems to be normal for the begining of a cycle.. as I said before just do enough of a water change to get the NO2 down with your tapwater (mucking around with RO water right now will just get your PH more instable.. and stable PH is the goal)
 
Alright... I should probably test my tap water and see what it is before adding chemicals. I really should have posted this in the starting out forums. Is there someone who can move it there? Or can I since I started the thread? Thanks for the great advice btw.
 
Dont worry about were you posted this.. Im bouncing back and fourth between here and getting started anyway.. :p
Ok.. what chemicals did you add?
What are your ammonia and nitrite numbers?
What exactly was your PH and KH before and what is it now? (If you havnt been testing For KH thats ok.. just say so..)
Are you using test strips or do you have a liquid reactant testkit? Teststips are not very accurate.

And the advice is no problem. :mrgreen:
 
Im using a cheap walmart teststrip test kit. And I would say my KH is close to 300... PH is probably close to 8. This test doesnt test for ammonia levels. I guess I should've considered that when purchasing a test kit... I guess I'll have to get a liquid reactant testkit. There are not a lot of fish stores around here. I go to petsmart a lot though. Do they have any good test kits there, or should I get something online? Is KH just hardness, or is it something different?
 
Welcome to AA!

You have a huge bio-load (fish amount) in the tank which is not great when your in the midst of cycling. There wasn't a sufficient amount of nitrifying bacteria present. You really do need a liquid re-agent test kit for NH3, NO2, NO3, Kh and ph. Petsmart should have the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals brand available.

kh refers to the amount of carbonate hardness in your water. A decent level from 3-8 dkh is great. This helps maintain your ph.
 
NH3, NO2 and NO3 testkits are absolutely nessisary to cycle a tank.. the first two are more important for the beginning of the cycle..

And you didnt mention what chemicals you added.. what were they?
 
Well of course I added dechlorinator. I also added a ph regulator, and thats about it, because everything else besides the hardness of the water looked fine. I'm about to do a 25% water change. Do you think I should do less of a water change, or is 25% fine during a cycle? Or maybe more than 25%? Also, theres a chemical called Cycle that I saw at walmart while I was working today. Do you have any information about it?
 
you really need to know how much NH3 and NO2 is in the water so you know how much water to change.. I would be changeing 50% every day to other day untill I could get the testkit.. the PH regulator just added a PO4 and will likely cause algae problems down the road if you keep adding it (you will get rid of it eventually with the water changes)
Cycle is not a product that is proven through use to work.
 
I could probably have my mom pick up a test kit tomorrow. Darn petsmart doesnt stay open late enough. I forgot to mention that I also added salt to my water. Just a tablespoon to every 5 gallons. Do you think I should add more when I change my water, or just not add anymore until my water is cycled?
 
I wouldnt use salt unless the fish were sick.. but it might help you if your going through a NO2 spike.. It might be worthwhile to keep the salt in there to prevent NO2 poisoning. I would stop adding it after the cycle has finished.
 
So if my tapwater has no nitrites, nitrates, ammonia, and a ph of around 8 (testing with a liquid reactant test kit of course) The only thing I need to add to the water is dechlorinator? If so, then I will just buy a gravel vaccum to get the water and clean a little bit of the gravel just to get a little of the old food and put more water back in?
 
It wouldnt be nessisary to vac the gravel (maybe just hover over it to get the exess food up) untill the cycle is over.. and dechlorinator is all thats really nessisary.
 
okay I just did my first water change, and I gotta say... The python thing made it really easy... I didnt change a lot of it, but im going to do another water change again tomorrow. I can tell a difference in my danios... they are playing "tag" i like to call it.
 
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