Hi all! New to the forum!
I have a 37 gallon (planted) tank. I did a fishless cycle on it and followed all the stages, waiting until I saw nitrates, waiting until ammonia and nitrite was 0, dosing w ammonia before I added livestock to ensure it went to 0 after 24 hours, everything. The tank was fully cycled. It took I think a month.
I added 10 cherry shrimp and 10 amano shrimp (followed the whole procedure of floating them, slowly adding tank water to their bags over time, etc). Within 24 hours I had already lost a cherry shrimp and have been losing about 1 cherry shrimp a day. I have been testing water parameters and my ammonia is still at 0, but nitrites have spiked to where I can't even determine their exact level. I have low nitrates so the nitrogen cycle is going, just not enough I think. I had 2 filters on my tank initially and unfortunately had to remove the filter that had been in the longest because the shrimp wouldn't stop swimming in it and one died because it got stuck. I think this may have hurt my beneficial bacteria colony.
I have gotten Fritz's complete water detoxifier and have been adding that along with 25% daily water changes. I today also added seachem's stability bacteria to see if maybe adding more bacteria would help. It has been almost a week and I have seen 0 change in nitrite level from all of these actions. Does it just take a long time to go down? I realize now I probably should have added one group of shrimp at a time rather than both at once. Is there anything else I can do so I stop losing shrimp?
Thank you!
I have a 37 gallon (planted) tank. I did a fishless cycle on it and followed all the stages, waiting until I saw nitrates, waiting until ammonia and nitrite was 0, dosing w ammonia before I added livestock to ensure it went to 0 after 24 hours, everything. The tank was fully cycled. It took I think a month.
I added 10 cherry shrimp and 10 amano shrimp (followed the whole procedure of floating them, slowly adding tank water to their bags over time, etc). Within 24 hours I had already lost a cherry shrimp and have been losing about 1 cherry shrimp a day. I have been testing water parameters and my ammonia is still at 0, but nitrites have spiked to where I can't even determine their exact level. I have low nitrates so the nitrogen cycle is going, just not enough I think. I had 2 filters on my tank initially and unfortunately had to remove the filter that had been in the longest because the shrimp wouldn't stop swimming in it and one died because it got stuck. I think this may have hurt my beneficial bacteria colony.
I have gotten Fritz's complete water detoxifier and have been adding that along with 25% daily water changes. I today also added seachem's stability bacteria to see if maybe adding more bacteria would help. It has been almost a week and I have seen 0 change in nitrite level from all of these actions. Does it just take a long time to go down? I realize now I probably should have added one group of shrimp at a time rather than both at once. Is there anything else I can do so I stop losing shrimp?
Thank you!