Water Quality

[shellieca]

High nitrite levels indicate the presence of what will soon be ammonia. How clean is your tank? are you changing out the charcoal every 3-4 weeks? If not, I suspect channeling or leaching taking place in your filter. Overfeeding will cause a spike in nitrite before it turns to ammonia. If you are not overfeeding, count your fish...are they all there. The presence of a dead fish could also five you a spike in nitrites. Water changes will always dilute what is going in. Your nitrites should Never rise when doing a WC unless there is something wrong with the water you adding.
D

Nitrites are after ammonia not before.

 

[shellieca]

Thanks All, after my 60% water change, nitrites only went down a small bit, but still in stress zone! I can't imagine why?! Established tank, running 3 years! I'm going to check my tap water. Usually it's 100% safe (besides the chlorine)

Please test with a liquid test kit. Some stores will test it for you if you really don't want to get a liquid test kit.

 

[Aquena]

Thanks All! The weird thing is that I just added a fresh batch of Ammo Carb a week ago. Tank really clean. Been doing at least 50 % water changes three times in last two days. Fish seem fine, fry included. I will say my baby neon 1/2 inch long went missing two days ago. I think he is definitely gone, but after 3 water changes never found him dead or alive. Maybe my Pleco got him after he may have died. No other fish missing. Ph low this am (6.7) added Arm and hammer baking soda. Nitrates safe , nitrites still stress zone. I guess I will change ammo carb again and monitor nitrites and see if if they go down or up. If they go up again/more I will have to do another 50% WC.

 

[dwayne.aycock]

Can't go wrong with what you are doing. If you are using paper test, I suggest going to the chemical reagents. There are also a few products on the market that measure a large number of water chemistry conditions. The company is out of Tennessee, and they measure:
PH, Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia, GH,KH, conductivity, etc. Make sure you don't have old media in your filters like old charcoal or ammosorb. If these have been around for more than a month, they are saturated and should be discarded. There is no amount of rinsing or washing that will make it better. These materials MUST be replaced. Good luck! The solution to pollution is always dilution.
D

 

[Aquena]

Thank You!

 

[That Guy]

Just replied to your other posting, just to add on here, when cleaning filter media lightly ronse the foam in used tank water from a water change to avoid losing too many beneficial bacteria. Good luck!

 

[Autumnsky]

Just replied to your other posting, just to add on here, when cleaning filter media lightly ronse the foam in used tank water from a water change to avoid losing too many beneficial bacteria. Good luck!

I was going to mention this above also. I will also put new treated water into a 5G bucket and clean everything using the water from the new 5G to get it even cleaner.

If you have a planted tank you don't need any Charcoal.

I would rinse the filter media gently as possible but get it cleaned out. The gunk in the filter box and pads can cause high nitrates.

Rinsing the filter media first week. Then in a week start by doing a super vac job on the substrate, maybe divide the bottom and do one half that week and do the other half the next week.

Then the week after that do the filter and housing for it. This should help. This way you don't kick up too much gunk at one time. And give the BB as much chance as possible and still get the tank cleaned out.

Do you use any flake food?

I have found that flake food messes things up pretty quickly.

Saw you mentioned you had some babies and what you feed them is good, maybe try half the amount and still feed 4x.