NickNaylor
Aquarium Advice Regular
After looking at a box of water for the last month, I finally added some fish yesterday! I'm so happy - so much more interesting with little critters swimming around in there. I had to share a video to brag.
I added 4 dalmation mollies and 2 bristlenose plecos. I couldn't get good views of the plecos since they're pretty shy and their black color is hard to see with the black acrylic back wall and EcoComplete. I just don't like the look of albino fish, which is what the LFS recommended to make them "pop" with my tank. I think my next addition will be a school of 6-8 cardinal tetras in the next week or two. If everything goes well, I may add 1-2 rams as the main "showpiece" of the tank (love the way they look) down the line.
As you can see, they seem to enjoy chewing on the plants...
And now a question about nitrites. During my cycle, I've been testing water daily. To provide a brief summary, my cycle started on 9/24 and by 10/8 my ammonia dropped to 0 ppm. I was adding 2-4 ppm daily after that and the tank was able to keep the ammonia at 0 ppm when I checked the ammonia levels ~24 hours later. I started getting nitrites on 10/5 and finally had an undetectable level on 10/25. My nitrates were super high (at least 160 ppm, likely higher), so I began doing large water changes in preparation for adding some fish.
I've noticed that whenever I do water changes, I suddenly get spikes in my nitrites - anywhere from 1-2 ppm. Whenever I skip my water changes for a day, the nitrites drop down back to 0 ppm. I'm not getting nitrites in my water supply (I tested it and also looked at my city's water quality report). However, I really have no explanation for this. When I do my water changes, I add 3 mL of Prime (the recommended dose for my 30-gallon tank) to the tank before filling it back up.
To give a recent example, I did a massive (80-90%) water change early in the morning yesterday. My nitrites were 1 ppm a couple of hours after the water change. Because I'm not convinced that nitrites are actually in the tank, I added the fish later in the afternoon. They've done fine and look healthy thus far. The mollies have been hanging around the top of the water this morning, but I think that's because I fed them (which got them quite excited). They still go down to the middle/bottom of the water column to pick off some algae from the plants. They're not doing anything that I would interpret as "gasping" for air, being listless, etc. that would suggest nitrite toxicity (you can see them doing their thing in the video).
When I checked my water this morning, my nitrites were 0 ppm (no water change before checking parameters). The temperature of my tank is hanging between 77-79, the pH is around 7.8, and the KH is 5. These have been stable for the last few days. My nitrates are between 20-40 ppm this morning. I'm using Fluorish Excel daily and Flourish + Flourish Trace at the twice weekly dosing schedule recommended on the bottle (and have been since adding plants to the tank very early on in the cycle). I was previously using DIY CO2 but have stopped injecting with that for the time being until I can get a high-tech setup since I wasn't happy with how inconsistent the DIY output was (and didn't want to gas the fish). I'm planning on doing 10-20% water changes daily until I can get the nitrates to 10-20 ppm. The only other thing that I think is notable is that I have a submergible UV sterilizer which runs for 10 hours a day.
Any thoughts on where these "spikes" might be coming from? Again, I'm not actually convinced that I'm getting large spikes in nitrites because the "spikes" seem to be associated with water changes and resolve when I skip water changes, which is the exact opposite of what I would expect to see. I thought maybe the Prime might be doing it, but I found no such thing when I searched online (and Prime purportedly binds to nitrites anyway). I otherwise don't have another explanation. I'd appreciate some input from you wise sages.
Thanks a bunch!
I added 4 dalmation mollies and 2 bristlenose plecos. I couldn't get good views of the plecos since they're pretty shy and their black color is hard to see with the black acrylic back wall and EcoComplete. I just don't like the look of albino fish, which is what the LFS recommended to make them "pop" with my tank. I think my next addition will be a school of 6-8 cardinal tetras in the next week or two. If everything goes well, I may add 1-2 rams as the main "showpiece" of the tank (love the way they look) down the line.
As you can see, they seem to enjoy chewing on the plants...
And now a question about nitrites. During my cycle, I've been testing water daily. To provide a brief summary, my cycle started on 9/24 and by 10/8 my ammonia dropped to 0 ppm. I was adding 2-4 ppm daily after that and the tank was able to keep the ammonia at 0 ppm when I checked the ammonia levels ~24 hours later. I started getting nitrites on 10/5 and finally had an undetectable level on 10/25. My nitrates were super high (at least 160 ppm, likely higher), so I began doing large water changes in preparation for adding some fish.
I've noticed that whenever I do water changes, I suddenly get spikes in my nitrites - anywhere from 1-2 ppm. Whenever I skip my water changes for a day, the nitrites drop down back to 0 ppm. I'm not getting nitrites in my water supply (I tested it and also looked at my city's water quality report). However, I really have no explanation for this. When I do my water changes, I add 3 mL of Prime (the recommended dose for my 30-gallon tank) to the tank before filling it back up.
To give a recent example, I did a massive (80-90%) water change early in the morning yesterday. My nitrites were 1 ppm a couple of hours after the water change. Because I'm not convinced that nitrites are actually in the tank, I added the fish later in the afternoon. They've done fine and look healthy thus far. The mollies have been hanging around the top of the water this morning, but I think that's because I fed them (which got them quite excited). They still go down to the middle/bottom of the water column to pick off some algae from the plants. They're not doing anything that I would interpret as "gasping" for air, being listless, etc. that would suggest nitrite toxicity (you can see them doing their thing in the video).
When I checked my water this morning, my nitrites were 0 ppm (no water change before checking parameters). The temperature of my tank is hanging between 77-79, the pH is around 7.8, and the KH is 5. These have been stable for the last few days. My nitrates are between 20-40 ppm this morning. I'm using Fluorish Excel daily and Flourish + Flourish Trace at the twice weekly dosing schedule recommended on the bottle (and have been since adding plants to the tank very early on in the cycle). I was previously using DIY CO2 but have stopped injecting with that for the time being until I can get a high-tech setup since I wasn't happy with how inconsistent the DIY output was (and didn't want to gas the fish). I'm planning on doing 10-20% water changes daily until I can get the nitrates to 10-20 ppm. The only other thing that I think is notable is that I have a submergible UV sterilizer which runs for 10 hours a day.
Any thoughts on where these "spikes" might be coming from? Again, I'm not actually convinced that I'm getting large spikes in nitrites because the "spikes" seem to be associated with water changes and resolve when I skip water changes, which is the exact opposite of what I would expect to see. I thought maybe the Prime might be doing it, but I found no such thing when I searched online (and Prime purportedly binds to nitrites anyway). I otherwise don't have another explanation. I'd appreciate some input from you wise sages.
Thanks a bunch!