Nitrites

[Mlrust1816]

Yesterday I got home from work and I saw that one of my Bolivian Rams was considerably darker almost black on its head, which is obviously a bad sign.

So I did some tests and I found out that my nitrites were quite high and my pH had gotten up to 7.6 (amonia was zero)

What is the best stratagy to stabilize this peak and how to prevent this from happening again (the last water change was last Sunday)

 

[crazycat]

how long has your tank been up and running? is it fully cycled?

i would start doing 20% pwcs every day or every other day until you get the nitrites down.

 

[BrianNY]

If your tank was fully cycled then something is killing off your nitrifying bacteria colony or your tank is overloaded beyoned the filter capacity. Let's look at the obvious:
1. Too many fish or too many recent additions.
2. pH fluctuations between tap water and tank water.
3. Cleaned the filter out recently and wiped out the bacteria colony
4. High Chlorine content and no chlorine/chloramine remover used.

Any of these will cause ammonia, then nitrite spikes. As cat suggests, 20% daily water changes are really all you can do to help your fish.