Mercedes3681
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Hi! I'm new to fish keeping, I was thrown into it when my daughter brought home a goldfish. The fish promptly died, but I had already bought a 10g tank and all the accessories so we bought another one. I thought I knew what I was doing after massive amounts of googling and reading on these forums, but apparently not, as I soon discovered the water conditioner I was using (Tetra SafeStart) was not the best option. Our little goldfish died of ammonia poisoning and I refuse to get more fish until I figure out this nitrogen cycle business!
I have gotten loads of information just from reading these forums and once my tank is cycled I'm looking into getting a few rasboras or ember tetras and maybe a few pygmy corys.
After the last goldfish died I emptied the tank, rinsed the gravel, plants, changed the filter, and added fresh tap water treated with Seachem Prime. That was 14 days ago, the tank's been running and I haven't touched it since.
Now that I've finally gotten an API liquid test kit, I have a few specific questions that I hope someone can answer for me:
My tap water is 7.6 pH but the tank is at 8.4. Why? Should I worry about it? From what I understand the actual pH doesn't matter so much, it's the fluctuations that hurt fish. But 8.4 seems high especially coming from a 7.6 tap?
My current tank readings are:
Ammonia 0.50 ppm
Nitrite 0.25 ppm
Nitrate 10-20 ppm
I noticed a week ago that the filter (which I changed when I emptied the tank 2 weeks ago) was full of greenish stuff but today it's practically spotless. Why?
What do I do now? Just continue to test and wait until the ammonia and nitrites are at 0 and nitrates are at 40 ppm?
I don't have any previous readings other than what I remember the test strips being a week ago (before I got this cool API kit ), the ammonia was high a week ago though, maybe 3.0 ppm or as best as I could figure on those strips (they're in the garbage now btw, along with the SafeStart!).
Thank you so much for any help you can give me!
I have gotten loads of information just from reading these forums and once my tank is cycled I'm looking into getting a few rasboras or ember tetras and maybe a few pygmy corys.
After the last goldfish died I emptied the tank, rinsed the gravel, plants, changed the filter, and added fresh tap water treated with Seachem Prime. That was 14 days ago, the tank's been running and I haven't touched it since.
Now that I've finally gotten an API liquid test kit, I have a few specific questions that I hope someone can answer for me:
My tap water is 7.6 pH but the tank is at 8.4. Why? Should I worry about it? From what I understand the actual pH doesn't matter so much, it's the fluctuations that hurt fish. But 8.4 seems high especially coming from a 7.6 tap?
My current tank readings are:
Ammonia 0.50 ppm
Nitrite 0.25 ppm
Nitrate 10-20 ppm
I noticed a week ago that the filter (which I changed when I emptied the tank 2 weeks ago) was full of greenish stuff but today it's practically spotless. Why?
What do I do now? Just continue to test and wait until the ammonia and nitrites are at 0 and nitrates are at 40 ppm?
I don't have any previous readings other than what I remember the test strips being a week ago (before I got this cool API kit ), the ammonia was high a week ago though, maybe 3.0 ppm or as best as I could figure on those strips (they're in the garbage now btw, along with the SafeStart!).
Thank you so much for any help you can give me!