Hi everyone,
First of all thank you all for your help throuout the site it did help me alot so far. Right now however I am lost and can't find the answer I am looking for.
First off, I did all the mistakes one can make...
Bought a fish tank, set it up, trusted my LFS and boom... Disaster
I bought a 20g tank tall i believe it is only 2 feet wide. A Tetra EX20 whisper filter, tetra whisper 20 air pump and a heater (not plugged in at the moment as room temp is 80). Filled it up and added a bottle of "Startsmart complete".
The water was also treated with prime.
As instructed by the LFS i ran the tank for a week empty (just sand and decorations) and brought them a water sample a week later.
They told me I should be fine and can start adding fish.
I guess I got still lucky as he told me to only start with a few zebra danios they had for sale. I got 4 and added them to the tank. Of course doing the whole bag in the aquarium thing and dilluting the bag water with aquarium water over time.
Fast forward 6 weeks.
Now, that I realize I should have cycled the aquarium correctly in the first place and have my own water testing kit (API FW master liquid). I am not sure what to do.
In the meantime 3 of the 4 zebras died and the one left does not look to good either anymore. I tested my water and last week finally started showing nitrites.
Right now my water parameters before water change tonight were 1-2ppm ammonia, 0.5-1 nitrites and 0-5 nitrates. For the last week my nitrites finally started showing and are more towards purple every day but here is the weird thing. My ammonia is steady at 1-2ppm and does not drop even though nitrites are now showing so I must have some of the first kind of bacteria i need?
I did test my tap water and it shows 1-2ppm ammonia also therefor i did the last few water changes with store bought water about 50% every other day to try and save my fish. 2x with store bought water so far. Once I am close to zero I figure I can do a change with my tap water and use that as ammonia supply thats what I read in one of the cycle guides anyway.
So at this point i am not sure if there is anything I should do different to get the ammonia down? or is one fish really producing that much of it? I did even cut back feeding and as I did overfeed for sure in the beginning i am not anymore.
Thank you for any advice.
First of all thank you all for your help throuout the site it did help me alot so far. Right now however I am lost and can't find the answer I am looking for.
First off, I did all the mistakes one can make...
Bought a fish tank, set it up, trusted my LFS and boom... Disaster
I bought a 20g tank tall i believe it is only 2 feet wide. A Tetra EX20 whisper filter, tetra whisper 20 air pump and a heater (not plugged in at the moment as room temp is 80). Filled it up and added a bottle of "Startsmart complete".
The water was also treated with prime.
As instructed by the LFS i ran the tank for a week empty (just sand and decorations) and brought them a water sample a week later.
They told me I should be fine and can start adding fish.
I guess I got still lucky as he told me to only start with a few zebra danios they had for sale. I got 4 and added them to the tank. Of course doing the whole bag in the aquarium thing and dilluting the bag water with aquarium water over time.
Fast forward 6 weeks.
Now, that I realize I should have cycled the aquarium correctly in the first place and have my own water testing kit (API FW master liquid). I am not sure what to do.
In the meantime 3 of the 4 zebras died and the one left does not look to good either anymore. I tested my water and last week finally started showing nitrites.
Right now my water parameters before water change tonight were 1-2ppm ammonia, 0.5-1 nitrites and 0-5 nitrates. For the last week my nitrites finally started showing and are more towards purple every day but here is the weird thing. My ammonia is steady at 1-2ppm and does not drop even though nitrites are now showing so I must have some of the first kind of bacteria i need?
I did test my tap water and it shows 1-2ppm ammonia also therefor i did the last few water changes with store bought water about 50% every other day to try and save my fish. 2x with store bought water so far. Once I am close to zero I figure I can do a change with my tap water and use that as ammonia supply thats what I read in one of the cycle guides anyway.
So at this point i am not sure if there is anything I should do different to get the ammonia down? or is one fish really producing that much of it? I did even cut back feeding and as I did overfeed for sure in the beginning i am not anymore.
Thank you for any advice.