I know,I'm a fishy idjit,but....

[electrocutioner]

I'm getting all kinds of conflicting info from too many sources....
First of all,I decided to go with a fishy cycle,along with a number of additives and a sparsely populated tank.I am testing for chemicals and am prepared to do any wc necessary.
I have a 29 gal tank with bio and charcoal filters (eclipse 3,marineland).
Let it run for a couple of days with local water(hard,I'm told),with anti chlorine/chromate(sp?)drops as per instructions.
Added lots of plants along the back,bacteria solution,anti stress solution,and boiled bogwood.
After a day or two I populated with
1)my son's male betta..(okay,he was the first,at the 1 day mark,figured he was hardy,and had to be better off than in the bowl.He came from Al's LFS,a couple days prior,as did everything else)
2) 1 platy
3) 6 rasboras

First day of stock...
Betta was pissed about the new inhabitants.Well,mostly just the platy.Flared at him while he was acclimatising in his bag.I called Al's,livestock manager said no worries,betta wouldn't catch the platy.
Following this advice,I observed on and off for about 12 hours,as betta chased platy around the tank.So much for the calmative feature of having fish
At some point,I screwed up royally.Caught betta in the net,and returned him to son's tank.Directly.Missed him and felt bad about keeping a betta in such adverse conditions,relented,re-introduced him to community.Directly.
Well,he continued to chase platy that day after initial shock,but seemed to settle in and behave by the next day.
I assumed he had established a pecking order and was satisfied...
By the third day he was lethargic,and that evening I saw he was contaminated with ich.(I know,my fault).
I returned him to son's wee bowl,and have quarantined him there for now.


I have been advised by Al's LFS to leave him in quar.,and have added freshwater salts.The main tank I have also added salts to,and raised the temp to about 79 deg from about 75.The readings from the main tank are as follows,(after a partial water change)

((after partial water change and addition of marine salt/1 day after ich infestation on removed,stressed betta:
Ph 7.8
Amm .25-.35 ppm
NO2 0
NO3 5.0))

If you are reading this ,I thank you for your interest in my fishes plight/my ignorance.Any practical advice/experience will be appreciated.
______ _

 

[Mazdaman]

here goes. I'll answer as much as i can to the best of my knowledge. First, male bettas don't make the best fish for a com. tank. they also don't like strong currents. He might be best off alone. Second, you should read the article about ich: what it is and how to treat it. I think once it's in your tank you'll have to treat the whole tank. 79deg is not high enough to rid your tank of ich. 86deg and higher is too hot for ich to reproduce and 2-3 weeks it should all be gone.
Second you should read the articles related to the cycle, it'll tell you when to do pwc and what do when....

Don't add anymore fish to the tank untill it has finished its cycle. When you do add some, it should be little by little. A few fish this month, a few more the next month, etc....

What test kit are you using to get those readings?
After you read the articles, if you still have questions you can repost. Others will respond adn thats why this site is so great.
welcome to AA - don't forget to vote!!

 

[electrocutioner]

freshwater master test kit-aquarium pharmaceuticles,inc

As I said,I'm getting conflicting advice.A lot of it from the lfs,but they run a pretty big show,as they are a Al's aquarium chain.
They suggested the salts and temp.
Various web sites advocated a pwc to combat ammonia during the fishy cycle.

I'm sure I might have brought on the ich to betta.LFS assures me it's no biggie,like the common cold to you or I,and rarely fatal.(also inevitable)

No I won't add any fish till I get a complete N2 cycle.Just hope to get there with a healthy tank.

I realize a lot of you AA'ers advocate a fishless cycle,I have been reading an equal amount of material advocating a fishy cycle.Hope my ignorance doesn't keep y'all from sharing your experience...

Just voted...we're number 1!!!!

 

[Meredith]

When I got my 55, I had no idea a cycle even existed, so I just dumped in all my old fish, with fresh water. If it were me, I would go and get a little five gallon tank and a heater from the pet store, I know petsmart sells them for like 10 bucks I think, and move the betta in there. You can even get a little sponge filter for him too. He will fair better in 5 gallon that in a bowl. You may have some ich in your new tank, so keep an eye out for that as well. Hang in there. It does get better

 

[TomK2]

well, do you know if you have chloramines in your tap water? if so, that will make a salicylate ammonia test turn color. The two bottle salicylate test first adds chlorine to turn any ammonia into chloramine, then the chloramine reacts and turns the color. So, your low ammonia reading could be some ammonia from the fish in the absence of enough biofilter to deal with it. Or it could be from chloramines in the water, in the absence of enough biofilter to deal with it (your dechlorinator turns chloramine NH2Cl into NH3 and chlorine gas). The only reason why this matters, is to determine if doing a water change will help. If you are putting in 0.5 ppm of ammonia due to chloramines in your tap water, then doing a water change for 0.5 ppm of ammonia won't provide any dilutional benefit.
edit: this assumes a municipal supply. Chloramine is not in ground water.

I seem to remember someone else from toronto who had the local water report that said chloramines were used, and the ammonia test right from the tap showed 0.25 to 0.5 ppm. But I am not certain it was Toronto. You could test your tap water with a salicylate ammonia test and detect if you have chloramines that way.

Your fish stock may be just a bit too high to establish a bio-filter without seeing ammonia and nitrite spikes, but only time will tell for certain. At this point I suspect your nitrate reeding might be from nitrates in the tap water rather than from biofilter developement, you could test your tap water for nitrates as well. HTH

 

[Liggs17]

Regarding bettas, they can be peaceful community tank members if you remember that they fight other males of their species, and why they do so. They attack males of their species due to visual recognition, and they attack to eliminate any potential competition for females. It makes perfect sense from a Darwinian perspective. Any fish that this brightly colored or has flowing fins (fancy guppies, swordtails, mollies, platies, etc) can be mistaken as competition.
Obviously, this is a rule of thumb, only, and individual bettas may mistake just about any other fish for males of their species. Maybe this platy was too "good looking" for the betta to think of him as anything other than competition.

Also, and this is pure opinion on my part, but I constantly hear and read people claiming that bettas are happy in the little tiny bowls they are usually sold in, or small, one gallon tanks. While I will agree that they are able to survive in such environments, I cannot believe that they are "happy". My betta lives in a community tank with some firemouths, corycats, and serpae tetras, and not only is he unaggressive, but he is one of the most active fish in the tank. He is constantly swimming and actually follows me around (as far as he can in the tank) as I move about the room...this is in a 30g long, and for a fish this active, I can't agree with those who think it is better served in a small tank or bowl, though I mean no disrespect for those whose opinions differ from mine.

Liggs

 

[patagonia]

I am the other person from toronto that tom seems to remember...and yes...we do have chloramines in our tap water...i checked it out with the city...so what i did while my tank was (still is actually) cycling was not changing any water during the ammonia spike since it only reached 0.50ppm...and now its all gone...so make sure when u treat ur tap water for water changes to add the amount of conditioner recommended for chloramines...HTH...good luck...and like Meredith said...IT DOES GET BETTER...

 

[patagonia]

I also tested our tap water for nitrates and i got 0ppm...tested it several times actually...im really new here so i cant tell u where the nitrates are coming from...sorry...

 

[electrocutioner]

OK
I decided to test a sample of tap water for ammonia,and it came up at 0.0.
I also tested from a batch of tap water that I treated with a chlorine/chloramine remover 24 hours ago,and it gave me a reading of .....0.25-0.35.?
Is there something I'm missing here??

 

[TomK2]

OK
I decided to test a sample of tap water for ammonia,and it came up at 0.0.
I also tested from a batch of tap water that I treated with a chlorine/chloramine remover 24 hours ago,and it gave me a reading of .....0.25-0.35.?
Is there something I'm missing here??

Well, I gotta think there was an error somewhere in the test that was not treated with the conditioner. Or the whole presumption about the AP test being able to detect chloramines is wrong. But how could it be, since you get a positive result after the dechlorinator. Or you have di or tri chloramine in your water, but the di and tri chloramines are undesirable and avoided by the water co. BTW, your test of 0.25 is right in line with what patagonia got from his Toronto water.

I could see getting a negative result after using some dechlorinators, since they might interfere with the test, but not a negative with untreated, and then a positive with treated.

How about it Patagonia, did you use conditioner before you used the ammonia test? Did the conditioner effect the test of your tap water? I don't have access to chloramine water, so I would love to hear how chloramines effect your test kits. by pure deduction, I predict that chloramines will make an AP salicylate test turn color.

 

[electrocutioner]

So I'm not completely insane,didn't seem right to me either.
I'll repeat the procedure tomorrow,for the sake of science,but I don't beleive it will matter,I'm sure I did the test right.Unless I accidently added an extra drop.How sensitive is the test?
Could it have anything to do with the plastic bucket I'm treating the water in?It's brand new 5 gallon pail from home depot,never used for anything but.Could it be something in the plastic????

 

[TomK2]

Well, since 0.25 ppm is the lower limit of the ammonia test, and since 5ppm is the lower limit of the nitrate test, it would not be that hard to misread the colors or make a slight error. I have difficulty with them sometimes. The Nitrate test is described as somewhat fickle in the instructions, the timing and shaking is described as "critical" to results. How you hold the tube and under what light can confound the best of us. Put the water in the bucket, test it. Then dechlor and test it. Let us know!

If the bucket was well rinsed, I doubt it would effect the test. It is a bummer to have chloramine in the water, but not insurmountable.

 

[electrocutioner]

Ok,I guess science never sleeps.So I repeated the ammo test with atube of plain tap water and a tube of treated tapwater.The results,surprisingly are the same.

Well, since 0.25 ppm is the lower limit of the ammonia test, and since 5ppm is the lower limit of the nitrate test, it would not be that hard to misread the colors or make a slight error. I have difficulty with them sometimes.

actually the reason that I recorded .25-.35 ppm on the ammo test,was that the greenish hue between .25 and .50 was somewhat imperceptable to me.However the yellow of a negative reading is pretty distinct,and is exactly what I get from the straight tapwater. :? (I even got my wife to have a look,in case it's not just my mind that's failing )
I just made a tech support inquiry to aquarium pharm. If they are willing and able to shed some light on this puzzle,I'll be sure to let you know.

edit/ as far as the nitrate reading goes,I'm assuming it is the water I'm using.No way my tank is producing this on its own yet.

 

[patagonia]

well...my tap water gives me 0.25ppm ammonia before and after i treat it...and im also using the AP test...heres the report from the city where i got the information from...

http://www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/pdf/chemicals_in_drinking_water_technical.pdf

i believe (correct me if im wrong please) that even though its still positive for ammonia after being treated (i use prime) its in a "non toxic" form and its still available for the bacteria to be consumed...i started the cycling of my tank a little over 3 weeks ago and even right after a water change i get 0 ammonia (that is after the ammonia spike)...so i guess they are consuming it.... i know its a little bit confusing to match the results and i think when i posted for this chloramine thing i read somewhere between 0-0.25ppm...which was kinda tricky and thats why i called the city...and the link above is what they sent me...im in the north york area...where are u?

 

[TomK2]

Very interesting. I would have expected a color change in the untreated and the treated sample, like patagonia gets. Hmmm. Well, what would life be without a few mysteries?

 

[patagonia]

so this is what i did...i just tested tank water and tap water (24hours old) for ammonia at the same time...and tank is 0 and tap is 0.25ppm...
did the same thing for nitrates and i got tank water 5ppm and tap water 0ppm...

 

[electrocutioner]

Actually Pat,I'm a little S/W of you,out in Oakville.I just put T.O. on the internet as most people have actually heard of it and have an idea where it is.
Just got off the phone from the LFS they said that the chloramine treatment will break it down into chlorine with ammonia as a by-product.If this is the case,I guess it explains it.
What do you think,TomK2?Does that sound right to you?
Here is what I found on the net regarding chems in Oakville water(LFS says that chloramine is also present)

The facility is a conventional purification plant with a process consisting of
coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, chlorination, filtration, fluoridation, disinfection
with chlorine gas, and backwash treatment. A super-chlorination system with Sulphur
dioxide dechlorination is available for control of taste and odour events. Seasonally, the
Oakville Plant pre-chlorinates the raw water intake for zebra mussel control.

Thanks all for the input!!!

 

[TomK2]

Yep, that is exactly what a dechlorinator does. takes chloramine (NH2Cl) and converts it to Ammonia (NH3) and Chlorine gas (Cl). For chlorine water, the chlorine is actually hypochlorite (HOCl) and the dechlorinator breaks the bond so that the chlorine diffuses out of the water.

So it is no surprise that chloramine water would test positive for ammonia after being treated with a dechlorinator. What is a surprise, is that the chloramine is not being detected by the ammonia test. A two bottle salicylate ammonia test first adds chlorine and changes the pH to convert ammonia to chloramine in the test tube, then the second bottle adds reagents that change color with chloramine and the contents of the first bottle. So the mystery is why your test kit doesn't turn color with the untreated chloramines, since the test actually measures ammonia by how much chloramine it can be turned into.

So, just for confirmation, you do have a two bottle salicylate ammonia test that turns green? The alternative is called a nessler reagent test kit using iodine that turns brownish. I am rather certain you have chloramine in the tap water regardless of the mystery. It is entirely possible that the AP ammonia test will not detect chloramine, though I cant figure out why not and patagonia's experience seemed to indicate it would. I have a web page that tries to explain this stuff: http://home.comcast.net/~tomstank/tomstank_files/page0018.htm