Continuous high NITRITE without AMMONIA?

[Graybeard]

I am going on 7 weeks now, 2 weeks with fish and I continue to see elevated Nitrites (5 ppm) but Ammonia has been a big "0" since I quit adding ACE 10%, before the fish of course.

Are there any other sources for Nitrite?

This is really bugging me and I find it hard to believe that no Nitrite eating bacteria are growing.

The fish seem to be fine, in two weeks I have lost 3 Lemon Tet's, one every two days or so but the last three days have been uneventful. The Lemon Tets, Serpae Tets, Flame G, Cory's and Pleco are super-active. In fact, the Tets remind me of piranaha's at feeding time.

No Nitrites in the tap water either.

I have used Prime with each water change.

Temp is 80 deg.

 

[kay-bee19]

Any indication of nitrate in the tank?

If your test kit indicates the presence of nitrate that means that the bacteria which process nitrite are at least present at some level. You're most likely experiencing the nitrite spike of the cycle process, which can last weeks. Your nitrite will eventually drop down to undetectable levels once the nitrite-processing bacteria sufficiently build up.

If you have no detectable nitrate levels, then something is preventing the establishment of your nitrite-processing bacteria. You could probably add more bio-media if that's the case.

 

[Skyrmir]

Ditto what kay-bee said. Also I've found you can help things along with good aeration, not a huge difference, but it helps. If your worried about the fish or just in a hurry, you could also gamble on using some bio-spira. It'll take a couple days to knock down a nitrite spike, if it works. The gamble is how fresh your LFS keeps the stuff. At worst you'll be wasting some cash if the bio-spira is old or wasn't kept cold enough. Or you can wait a few more weeks and the bacteria should grow on thier own.

 

[Graybeard]

Yes, Nitrate is present at the middle level of the AP test card.

I have not found Bio-Spira locally. While at the LFS, I talked with the FW fellow for quite a while and he said (I have Googled to confirm but found no evidence) that Kent Freshwater bought the rights to Bio-Spira. He suggested a bottle of Kent Eco-Start and I have dosed the tank every day this week. I don't place very much confidence in "bacteria in a bottle" but it was very inexpensive so I decided to try it.

Here's a question, will the Prime encapsulate the Nitrate, Nitrite and Ammonia allowing the fish to remain healthy?

If this is true, does this render the Nitrite useless as food for the Nitrate prolonging the cycle time?

I was doing large PWC's almost every 2-3 days but thought I may be stressing the fish. My gut feeling is to dilute the Nitrites.

The water is clear and smells like an aquarium. However, I did notice a slight sheen to the water surface. Is this a related problem?

 

[malkore]

Ok, so when you test the tap water, it has no nitrites using the same test kit, correct? Just making sure the test kit isn't bad.

If you change 50% of the water all at once, and retest nitrites an hour later, is it 50% lower than before the water change?

You have to use extra Prime to neutralize nitrite. Honestly I would keep with the water changes if they are lowering nitrite. Don't use ANY other water conditioning products besides a normal dose of Prime when doing a water change. I wouldn't even bother with Bio-spira at this point. If the bottle you got wasn't kept in a fridge at the store, the bacteria starter is useless.

The sheen on the surface is just built up proteins. Its normal and not a problem.

 

[Graybeard]

malkore,

A tap water test comes up clean on Nitrites.

A 50% water change will not lower the Nitrite level sufficiently to read on the card, it takes 75%-90% to bring it down to the lightest purple color. I'm at work so I can't check the card for the actual PPM numbers.

 

[kay-bee19]

To affectively detox the nitrites you'd probably have to add Prime daily.

Ultimately, the idea would be to get nitrites as low as possible.

Hopefully you'll be able to keep your nitrite levels low through water changes. However, in regards to measuring off the chart levels (with the AP nitrite test it maxes out at 5ppm), one way to get an idea of how high they really are is to test diluted tank water.

If you're able to accurately withdraw precise small amounts of water using a eye dropper or similar item, extract 1ml tank water and add 4ml tap water into the 5ml test tube. The results will be approximately 1/5th the actual nitrite ppm.

Under this scenario, 10ppm tank water will appear as 2ppm; 3ppm will appear close to 0.5ppm, etc. This will at least let you know if your "5ppm" results are really really 5ppm or actually in the 10+ppm range.

 

[TomK2]

Well, I presume you had a nitrite phase with the fishless cycle,it went to zero, but it has now returned?

No antibiotics were administered to the tank?
No copper treatments for ich?
No water changes without dechlor if you have chloramines in your water supply?
The test kit is has not gone bad?
The tank has not had a pH crash? Nitrifying bacteria have difficulty at pH 6.5 and lower.
Your nitrates are not really high? like nearing 100 ppm?

A review of my test kit chemistry notes shows:

Nitrite test Interferences: (not a complete list, where interference levels are given they are for the Hach Co test, and might not appy to Aquarium Pharmaceuticals)

Very high levels of nitrate (>100 ppm) since some of the abundant nitrate will convert to nitrite and register on the test. Ferric Ions, Ferrous Ions, Lead Ions, Mercurous Ions, Cupric ions.

Outside of a test kit gone bad or user error(possible) or an interfering agent (not very common), I would assume you need to do serial water changes with dechlor daily until the problem goes away. Bummer.

 

[7Enigma]

5ppm nitrIte is toxic to the fish. I would immediately do 50-75% PWC's until you get that number below 1.0ppm. I would feed the fish every other or every 3rd day. Anytime the nitrIte gets above 1.0ppm I would do a PWC.

I see you had 5 weeks prior to adding fish, and it appears you did a fishless cycle with ammonia? How did you determine it was time for fish? Prior to adding fish did you do a large 75-90% PWC?

It would be very difficult to believe that a successful fishless cycle would suddenly crash out only the nitrIte to nitrAte bacteria. Had you reported really high ammonia levels it would be a good guess that something killed the bacteria in the tank. After 7 weeks you should have a good amount of nitrIte to nitrAte bacteria...

The only thing I can think of to explain this situation would be that you dosed a bunch of times with ammonia during the fishless cycle, and so you had a huge buildup of nitrIte in the tank, and then added fish without a large PWC. That would explain the high nitrIte.

 

[Graybeard]

5ppm nitrIte is toxic to the fish. I would immediately do 50-75% PWC's until you get that number below 1.0ppm. I would feed the fish every other or every 3rd day. Anytime the nitrIte gets above 1.0ppm I would do a PWC.

I see you had 5 weeks prior to adding fish, and it appears you did a fishless cycle with ammonia? How did you determine it was time for fish? Prior to adding fish did you do a large 75-90% PWC?

It would be very difficult to believe that a successful fishless cycle would suddenly crash out only the nitrIte to nitrAte bacteria. Had you reported really high ammonia levels it would be a good guess that something killed the bacteria in the tank. After 7 weeks you should have a good amount of nitrIte to nitrAte bacteria...

The only thing I can think of to explain this situation would be that you dosed a bunch of times with ammonia during the fishless cycle, and so you had a huge buildup of nitrIte in the tank, and then added fish without a large PWC. That would explain the high nitrIte.

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On Friday night one Serpae was fluttering wildly so I checked the water:

Nitrites 5+ ppm

Didn't check ammonia just went straight to a PWC, about 80%

Lost the dying Serpae out the siphon tube and unrecoverable in a cold rainstorm.

After the water change:

Nitrite .25 ppm
Ammonia .25 ppm

The heater went haywire and would not shut off so I went to get a heater and replaced the TopFin 30 with a AquaView. I cut the filter material from the TopFin and placed it in the AV, put the sponge on top and then added the bag of ceramic media. I didn't plan on buying the filter but my goal was to establish more places for bacteria to live and it appears to be a better setup than the TopFin.

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Sunday morning

Nitrite 2.0 ppm
Ammonia 0 ppm

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When did I decide to add fish?

After weeks of seeing 0 ammonia, 5ppm Nitrates and high Nitrites. Correct or not, I added fish knowing I would be doing PWC's when Nitrites rose to high and fully expected the bacteria to catch up. I've posted several times on the high Nitrite levels and have not seen consistent responses as to why it's happening.

Yes, I have lost three Lemon Tet's and one Serpae Tet over two weeks but compared to many years of fishkeeping, never testing the water and losing many fish, I feel pretty comfortable with this setup; even now, with the high Nitrite issue.

Don't feed the fish for 3 days? My understanding is the fish need to eat small amounts several times a day.

I may rig a water filter system so that I can remove the chlorine and other additives/contaminants from the water before it hits the tank. It is possible that the chlorine added to our public water system to kill bacteria is killing the bacteria I need in the tank before the Prime gets the chlorine.

 

[TomK2]

Ah, your cycle was not done, as you had nitrites still. It will come, but now that you have fish in there, PWC's daily will be needed.

 

[7Enigma]

Question, when you replaced the filter for the new one did you keep the old one running in the tank (or just take the inserts out and put them in the new one). In a well established tank this would have probably been fine, but in such a new tank bacteria coat EVERYWHERE inside that filter, from the impeller, to the intake tube, to the spout where the water comes out, and everywhere in between.

Yes, don't feed the fish for at least 2 days. You could probably go once every 3 days, but I'd stick to the every other day routine. During this time you must also make sure that ALL the fish in the tank get food. They will obviously be very hungry and the more aggressive will get the majority but you need to make sure everyone gets a piece.

By not feeding you are limiting the amount of ammonia produced, and thus the amount of nitrIte in the tank. The fish can deal with the shortage of food, and its in their best interest anyway.

By limiting the food in the tank, and doing routine PWC when the nitrIte level goes above 1.0ppm, you should quickly get that nitrIte bacteria level up.

As for the Prime addition, there has been a lot of discussion on this forum regarding how, when, and where to add the prime. From a logical standpoint the best time to add the Prime IMO is in the bucket prior to adding it to the tank, and then use your hand to swish it around for a minute or so and then add it to the tank. This is simple if you do the bucket method to add and remove water from the tank, not so simple if you use a python.

While I feel the above method is the best, I cannot imagine that the small amount of chlorine in the tap water could wipe out a large amount of bacteria, unless you were filling the tank through the filter. j/k

 

[Macrosill]

Just incase of a little confusion. The cycle goes like this - 1st ammonia, then nitrItes, with an I, and then Nitrates, with an A. You will see the ammonia rise. Then the ammonia eating bacteria will begin to mulitply. They will consume the ammonia and begin to produce nitrItes. The nitrite eating bacteria will multiply and consume the nitrites. They will produce nitrates. There is nothing to eat the nitrates so pwc are necessary to get rid of the nitrAtes. When tere is no detectable ammonia and no detectable nitrItes, with an I, then and only then is the cycle complete. You can then add fish very slowly, one a week is a goo start. The reason is there will be ammonia produced by the fish's waste. There is only enough ammonia eating bacteria to eat what was in the water before the fish came. The ammonia eating bacteria needs to multiply more so the increase in ammonia can be effectively converted to nitrItes. Then the nitrite eating bacteria needs to multiply to eat the extra nitrites. This is why even a cycled tank can not be flooded with fish all at once. It is a slow process of building bacteria.