Recent content by weldon

Well, thanks again for all the advice. Unfortunately, the gourami died a couple days ago. I'm going to assume it was Nitrite poisoning or a complication from that. He didn't look any worse for wear and the swollen area was actually almost unnoticeable postmortem. The cycle continues in our...

No reason. I've since been keeping the water level right at the edge of the black trim. If I were to go back to doing PWC's every week, it might drop that low from evaporation though. Denver is very dry.

I would say it looks more like it's swollen. If it helps, you can click on the photos on the flickr site and then use the magnifying glass / zoom tool (labeled "all sizes") to get to the larger pictures where you might be able to see better.

You can read all about my adventure in setting up a tank for my son in this thread. It's a 10g starter kit from Petsmart with a Top Fin 10 filter. The filter bag has been stuffed with floss, after a lot of the activated charcoal was removed. Fish have been in the tank 67 days or so. The Gourami...

Bad news. The cycle is still moving along, but the Gourami has a problem. There is a white pustule/growth near his mouth that, to my untrained eye, looks infected. I have absolutely no idea what to do with sick fish, but it doesn't look pleasant. I'm sure the guy is stressed a bit from the...

It looks like my cycle is just getting going. I tested today and got the following results... Ammonia 0.5 (down from Tuesday) Nitrites 5.0 (way up from Tuesday) Nitrates 10 (up from Tuesday) I did a 50% PWC to try and reduce the Nitrite levels. I'll test later tonight to see where they are at...

A quick update: I tested for Nitrites again on Saturday about 4 hours after I got the .25 reading (I wanted my son to discover the Nitrites when he got home) and the reading was zero. I tested for Nitrates and didn't see any increase (still 5.0). Today, Nitrites are detectable, but below the...

Well things are finally moving. I was starting to feel like something was wrong with my test results and went out and bought the dwarf red gourami that my son had been waiting for (Tuesday night). I figured that maybe the Ammonia results were false and that the tank had cycled since there were...

I just tested my tap water again today. Ammonia = 1.0 Nitrites = 0.0 Nitrates = 5.0 Ammonia has gone down after a 25% PWC last night. Nitrites are still zero in the tank. I didn't check nitrates in the tank today, but I'll post again when I do.

tap water... 1.0 ammonia (chloramines, I think) 0.0 nitrites 5.0 nitrates (I think, I did this a while ago) After Dechlor (Aquasafe) 0.5 ammonia (again, the chloramines, I believe) I confirmed the tank test with a Mardel test strip and it read 0.5 ammonia. The AP test kit shows closer to 1.0...

Just wanted to confirm that the issue is gone now.

Another update... It's been 45 days since we added the first Leopard Danios. I have not done any PWC's since last Sunday. Latest readings are... 1.0 Ammonia (has been steady here since Monday, after the last PWC on Sunday) 0.0 Nitrite (steady as well, checked twice over the last week) 5.0...

Why? From what I understand now, the cycle won't start until Ammonia is present in the tank. If I had known then what I know now, I could've done a fishless cycle, but that still would've taken more than two weeks. From what I can tell, waiting two days did nothing except to confirm that the...

Another week gone by, and still no Nitrites. The Ammonia is consistently moving up to 1.0 ppm every day or second day. I was doing 50% PWC's every day but have started doing them every other day now. I went three days just to see if any Nitrites would show up on the test, but nothing. I did...

Some advice on the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals freshwater master test kit... This is $25-30 at the LFS and Petsmart, etc. If you have a Petsmart in Marietta, GA then you can print out the online pricing and ask them to match that price in the store. The online price is around $13-14.