Nitrite help, sick beta

[KenW]

My nitrites are at 2.0,
ammonia is reading between .25 & 0,
nitrate is reading 10,
pH is 6.8

i thought maybe the high nitrite is making him ill, but all the other fish seem fine. I am going to do a pwc to see what happens...could he be ill from something else? there's no visible signs like fungus or ich, so i am not sure whats up with him...

 

[jsoong]

This is the site help forum .... you should be posting in FW sick fish .... One of the mods please move this.

Whenever a fish is sick, it is imperative to have clean water. PWC's is definitely the way to go. You should have no nitrite or ammonia in a cycled tank .... you need to do as many pwc changes as needed to get that nitrite to below 0.25 & keep it there. (you will need 5-6 50% changes once or twice a day.)

What is your tank size, other occupants, time tank set up & other details ..... things that will help in finding out what is happening.

 

[An t-iasg]

Moved to Freshwater Unhealthy Fish forum.

Like jsoong says, a cycled tank has 0 ammonia and nitrites. You should do water changes as he suggests.

Different fish respond differently to ammonia and nitrite levels. The other fish may seem fine for now but with a nitrite level of 2.0, they are going to become ill too if the nitrites are not brought down with water changes. Don't disturb your filter media for now (so you don't disrupt the growing bacteria colonies), just do water changes.

 

[KenW]

thanks! what i cannot figure out is why the ammonia is reading 0, and the nitrites and nitrates are reading so highly? i have been doing 50% pwc's every 3 to 5 days, vacumming as much substrate as possible but when looking at up into the bottom of the tank from inside the cabinet, there's a lot of waste on the glass. i can't seem to get through enough gravel to vacuum that stuff out. I don't want to disturb too much of it also so as to cause a ammonia surge again, which happen last month and killed almost everything when I disrupted the substrate a great deal putting in a peice of driftwood. my LFS doesn't sell trumpet snails, and the next nearest one is 40 miles away. Do you recommend the trek to get them? I've been thinking about going there to get some, but its a 80+ mile journey.
the tank:
40gal FW, established about 20 weeks ago.
2 platys
1 pleco
1 catfish
5 neons
1 dwarf frog
1 gourami
2 hornwort plants, & plastic plants
the frog, neons, and gourami were added in the past 2 weeks.

 

[jsoong]

When your ammonia is reading zero and your nitrite is high, you are going through 2nd stage of the cycle (the nitrite spike). The nitrite phase always lag behind the ammonia phase by a couple of weeks, although at 20 weeks I would expect your tank to be completely cycled.

What test kit are you using, is it possible that the NO2 reading is in error? Also, is there any nitrates in your tap water to start? Normally, if you are seeing nitrates of 10, you really shouldn't be seeing a nitrite spike.

it is possible that you are seeing a mini cycle due to the addition of new fish. The safe thing to do at this point is up your water changes until your levels are back down to normal.

Is the betta being harassed? Betta & Gourami are both anabatoids .... and 2 males may not get along. Even in a 40 gal, you would need a fair bit of plants & hiding places so each can establish his own territory.

Regarding the substrate & MTS ... What is the substrate & its depth? You shouldn't need MTS unless you have sand, in which case the MTS will help aerate the sand bed.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Hey Ken,

There is significant evidence that we might be slightly off on the notion that we can kill off large portions of beneficial bacteria by vacuuming gravel so I think you should just go for it. Besides, you should also have a significant amount of bacteria in your filter media so as long as you don't disturb both, you should be just fine. Having all of that waste in your tank will probably prove to be worse than leaving it alone over the long run. I'd also say that your ammonia surge probably wasn't due to the fact that you disturbed the substrate, but instead, because you kicked up a lot of waste into the more oxygenated water where other types of bacteria could break it down into more ammonia than your biological filter could deal with quickly.

It may also be a good idea to remove some gravel so that you can reach these areas where detritus is building up. Above and beyond the problems you are experiencing now, there are many other issues that can be avoided by keeping as much decaying organic matter out of an aquarium so anything you can do to make that a more achievable goal can only help. Of course, you can help slow detritus build up as well. For example, over feeding fish almost always causes a lot of problems. In fact, keep in mind that there are at least a few different ways that you can over feed your fish:

1. The obvious one being if/when you feed more food than your fish can eat, resulting in food falling to the substrate where it goes unnoticed.
2. Feeding fish too quickly can also lead to problems so I like to feed smaller amounts of food, let the fish eat it all, and then add a little more if needed. This way the chances of your fish getting to the food before it winds up somewhere the fish don't see it or can't reach it is reduced.
3. You can also create problems if you allow your fish to eat too much food. Even though none of it may go uneaten, many of the fish we keep are opportunistic feeders...meaning, because they can't be sure when their next meal will come along, they eat as much as they can, whenever they can. This leads to increased waste production and as you have seen, gravel is notoriously good at catching the solid wastes and keeping it in places where we may not notice it until there is a big problem.

In short, when faced with problems similar to yours, I like to take a step back and make sure I have all of the basics covered and I think that you would benefit greatly from doing the same thing. Regarding the nitrite, you and more importantly, your fish may also benefit greatly from making sure that you have a lot of water movement in the surface area of tank(s). In short, nitrite causes problems because it bonds with your fishes' blood and restricts its ability to carry oxygen so ensuring that the water contains as much oxygen as possible will help relieve some of the stress nitrite causes.

 

[KenW]

thanks!

Such awesome advice!
jsoong, bad news; the beta died the other day. he got very pale and listless and was dead in the morning. I don't know what happened, he was fine then he suddenly wasn't. All the other fish are fine though. He and the gourami got along fine, the gourami is actually timid and reserved and leaves the other fish alone, except for the neons that he occasionally chases.

i am using a API freshwater test kit. and the substrate is fine pebbles and about 2" deep. i added more a month, per my LFS stating I needed 1lb per gallon. which i thought was unecessary, but then i did want to add to the inch or so that was already in there. to clean it thoroughly, should i take out all the fish, get out as much water as possible, and stir up the substrate well and get the gunk cleaned up off the bottom of the tank?

 

[Tommy Gun]

Sorry to hear about your loss KenW.

per my LFS stating I needed 1lb per gallon

I'm sure that some may disagree but in this hobby, most of those "per gallon" rules or guidelines have some significant flaw in them and/or cannot apply in every situation. However, even though I've spent a lot of time on forums over the past few years, this is the first time I've ever heard any sort of pounds of substrate per gallon rule being applied stringently to a FW tank. In fact, I'd almost say something to the person who told you this because A) many people prefer and do absolutely fine with bare bottom aquariums (both FW and SW) and probably more significantly, B) a large portion of those bare bottom tanks can be found in stores which sell fish. On the other hand though, it is somewhat common to see people with a lot of gravel substrate and I think most of them eventually start having problems and a lot of them just call it 'old tank syndrome' when they can't stop bacteria blooms and/or cannot keep low nitrate levels for more than a day or two.

Anyways, you might be able to remove the substrate without placing too much additional stress on your fish by taking some out with each water change and just try to vacuum out whatever you kick up in the process. Eventually, you should be able to reach the point where your gravel vacuum is able to remove the stuff you can see from the bottom of your tank.

You may already be doing this but I've found that using a gravel vacuum that you can hook directly to a faucet can be very handy with deep cleaning gravel because you get that additional power from the siphon that a regular, gravity powered siphon doesn't always have. In fact, I have sand substrate in all of my tanks but I still hook my python to my bathroom sink because it is more powerful than my kitchen faucet for some reason.

 

[jsoong]

I agree with Tommy. Unless you are growing plants, you don't need any substrate. Having pebbles is just for looks, and a thinner layer is certainly easier to keep clean.

I don't think you need to tear down the tank at this point. (Removing the fish & cleaning out the gravel is basically a tank tear down.) I would rely on frequent pwc with gravel vacs. Take out some of the substrate with each vac so to gradually get to the depth of substrate you want. If you limit yourself to a small section at a time, you shouldn't stir up too much gunk to cause trouble. If you have an efficient filter setup (what are you running BTW?), a bit of stirred up gunk will be captured by the filter within a couple hour and all you have to do is rinse it off the filter pads (in tank water or dechlorinated water).