obiwan1968
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
OK here's my dilemma. I have a 60 gal freshwater tank that I really let go for a long time. (yeah, the same tank from my one other post in 2013!! HAHA) I was down to 2 fish. The family bugged me so I decided to get the tank back going. I started to do water changes and get the levels to acceptable limits. At the same time, I also change all my tank decorations and my filter media. I then added 9 additional fish. Nothing giant. Just small guys. Clown loaches, Roseline sharks, angel fish etc... That was two weeks ago. This started my nightmare. Ever since then I have battled with high ammonia and nitrate levels. I've done everything under the sun to combat the higher levels. Gravel cleanings, water changes, filter additives...I've finally gotten my levels down to semi-acceptable numbers. Ammonia is just a shade higher than 0ppm and Nitrites are 0 and nitrates are around 10ppm. Heres my question. Since I removed all the decorations (a large fake coral and a large fake driftwood) AND changed my filter media, did I basically almost reset my nitrogen cycle back to the beginning? I was not sure how big of a part decorations have in the nitrogen cycle. Oh and in all this process I've lost 5 of my new fish. The 2 clown loaches got ich and were dead in 2 days. I've treated the tank for that using the medicine from my LFS but I think that's maybe what killed the loaches. I heard they're really sensitive. Sorry for the really long post. Any advice is appreciated. 
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