Hello,
I bought my first fish tank back in August. Sadly to say I didn't do enough research and I put a bunch of fish in all at once pretty much, and then the problems started. Four out of six of my fish died, and I felt horrible, I kept buying products from the stores, but nothing helped. Finally I went on-line and did research. Anyway I didn't cycle my tank, and this caused my fish to die of disease, and ammonia poisoning. It has been over a month now and my two platys have survived. I have been following the advice I have read and have bought an api testing kit. After 4 weeks or so my ammonia is down to 1.0 (from like 5) my nitrites are at 0 and my nitrates are at 20. The big problems is the ammonia doesn't seem to go down anymore and my pH keeps increasing. It was high to start about 8.0 but now it is up to like 8.8 (top of the chart). The fish seem to be fine, but I am getting what I beleive to be brown algae and want to add more fish. Any advice?
I bought my first fish tank back in August. Sadly to say I didn't do enough research and I put a bunch of fish in all at once pretty much, and then the problems started. Four out of six of my fish died, and I felt horrible, I kept buying products from the stores, but nothing helped. Finally I went on-line and did research. Anyway I didn't cycle my tank, and this caused my fish to die of disease, and ammonia poisoning. It has been over a month now and my two platys have survived. I have been following the advice I have read and have bought an api testing kit. After 4 weeks or so my ammonia is down to 1.0 (from like 5) my nitrites are at 0 and my nitrates are at 20. The big problems is the ammonia doesn't seem to go down anymore and my pH keeps increasing. It was high to start about 8.0 but now it is up to like 8.8 (top of the chart). The fish seem to be fine, but I am getting what I beleive to be brown algae and want to add more fish. Any advice?