A view of my newly added fish! And a question about nitrites

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NickNaylor

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
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Location
Dallas, TX
After looking at a box of water for the last month, I finally added some fish yesterday! I'm so happy - so much more interesting with little critters swimming around in there. I had to share a video to brag. :) :fish2:

I added 4 dalmation mollies and 2 bristlenose plecos. I couldn't get good views of the plecos since they're pretty shy and their black color is hard to see with the black acrylic back wall and EcoComplete. I just don't like the look of albino fish, which is what the LFS recommended to make them "pop" with my tank. I think my next addition will be a school of 6-8 cardinal tetras in the next week or two. If everything goes well, I may add 1-2 rams as the main "showpiece" of the tank (love the way they look) down the line.


As you can see, they seem to enjoy chewing on the plants...

And now a question about nitrites. During my cycle, I've been testing water daily. To provide a brief summary, my cycle started on 9/24 and by 10/8 my ammonia dropped to 0 ppm. I was adding 2-4 ppm daily after that and the tank was able to keep the ammonia at 0 ppm when I checked the ammonia levels ~24 hours later. I started getting nitrites on 10/5 and finally had an undetectable level on 10/25. My nitrates were super high (at least 160 ppm, likely higher), so I began doing large water changes in preparation for adding some fish.

I've noticed that whenever I do water changes, I suddenly get spikes in my nitrites - anywhere from 1-2 ppm. Whenever I skip my water changes for a day, the nitrites drop down back to 0 ppm. I'm not getting nitrites in my water supply (I tested it and also looked at my city's water quality report). However, I really have no explanation for this. When I do my water changes, I add 3 mL of Prime (the recommended dose for my 30-gallon tank) to the tank before filling it back up.

To give a recent example, I did a massive (80-90%) water change early in the morning yesterday. My nitrites were 1 ppm a couple of hours after the water change. Because I'm not convinced that nitrites are actually in the tank, I added the fish later in the afternoon. They've done fine and look healthy thus far. The mollies have been hanging around the top of the water this morning, but I think that's because I fed them (which got them quite excited). They still go down to the middle/bottom of the water column to pick off some algae from the plants. They're not doing anything that I would interpret as "gasping" for air, being listless, etc. that would suggest nitrite toxicity (you can see them doing their thing in the video).

When I checked my water this morning, my nitrites were 0 ppm (no water change before checking parameters). The temperature of my tank is hanging between 77-79, the pH is around 7.8, and the KH is 5. These have been stable for the last few days. My nitrates are between 20-40 ppm this morning. I'm using Fluorish Excel daily and Flourish + Flourish Trace at the twice weekly dosing schedule recommended on the bottle (and have been since adding plants to the tank very early on in the cycle). I was previously using DIY CO2 but have stopped injecting with that for the time being until I can get a high-tech setup since I wasn't happy with how inconsistent the DIY output was (and didn't want to gas the fish). I'm planning on doing 10-20% water changes daily until I can get the nitrates to 10-20 ppm. The only other thing that I think is notable is that I have a submergible UV sterilizer which runs for 10 hours a day.

Any thoughts on where these "spikes" might be coming from? Again, I'm not actually convinced that I'm getting large spikes in nitrites because the "spikes" seem to be associated with water changes and resolve when I skip water changes, which is the exact opposite of what I would expect to see. I thought maybe the Prime might be doing it, but I found no such thing when I searched online (and Prime purportedly binds to nitrites anyway). I otherwise don't have another explanation. I'd appreciate some input from you wise sages.

Thanks a bunch!
 
Interesting. Did you test your source water for ammonia? It is possible that chloramines are present which will be providing an ammonia source with every water change. A few years back I had 1.0 ammonia in my tap water and when I kept water changes under 30%, I did not see any ammonia or nitrite spikes. However, the day after a big (75%) change, I detected 0.5 ammonia and 1.0 nitrite. By the next day those were back to zeroes.
 
Caught a view of one of the plecos swimming along the glass.



That is one cure pleco!
If you ever go back to CO2 (DIY or pressurized) I would ditch the bubble wand. When I did yeast based DIY CO2, the output was low I did not worry about gassing the fish while running it 24/7.
 
That is one cure pleco!
If you ever go back to CO2 (DIY or pressurized) I would ditch the bubble wand. When I did yeast based DIY CO2, the output was low I did not worry about gassing the fish while running it 24/7.

Yeah, I will plan on doing ditching the bar when I get my CO2. Though I like the look of the bubbles, I don't like the idea of wasting CO2. I've heard people say that you can't get much CO2 from a DIY reactor, but based on an online pH/KH calculator, a few days ago I had upwards of 50 ppm of CO2. :eek:

Obviously that's great for the plants, but that scared me. I can just change my recipe, but there's a little too much unknown for me to be comfortable with the DIY. I also don't like the pH swings that come along with bottle changes, recipe changes, etc..

Huh, smart thinking on the ammonia. I didn't think of that because I wouldn't have thought that any appreciable amount of ammonia would've been metabolized that quickly (I jot down how long after a water change I test my parameters - usually it's 30-120 minutes later, and in either case this happens). Just checked a sample of water from the tap and it does, in fact, have ammonia (somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 ppm). Could that be it?
 
I've never done the pH/KH calculator for CO2 concentration...I should look into that.
At best, with yeast based DIY CO2 the most it would generate (two 2L bottles) was 1 bubble per 2-3 seconds. One thing I did not like was the blob of what I believe was yeast developing at the end of the airline. I fed the CO2 into the intake of the HOB filter. I used an insane amount of salt in the bubble counter/yeast trap container in an effort to prevent yeast from getting to the tank. It did not work apparently.
Yes, the ammonia is causing the nitrite spike. Is the conversion to nitrite acting that quickly? I don't know. I do know that the nitrite spike has a very short window. During my last fishless cycle, I could not detect nitrites even though nitrates were being generated. Only when I tested more than once a day on Day 2 after adding ammonia is when I would see any.
If you limit the water changes to 25-30% then it should minimize the nitrite spike. You could do more than one WC per week as needed.
 
2 BN Plecos in a 30g may be pushing it ? They are poop machines.

What are you feeding the Plecos ?
They are super cute right now for sure.

Offer the Mollies green peas ( frozen/thawed/skinned ) or other greens so they'll leave your plants alone.

Rams need specific conditions. I'd talk to CoralBandit to see if they'd work for your tank.

Mollies like hard water and some salt.
Rams like high temps and soft water.
Cardinals enjoy warm temps and soft water also.

Your tank looks very nice. I'm not trying to bash your choice of fish.
I'd just say do your research.

I worry when people add Algae eating fish to a brand new tank. I always wonder they'll starve if not fed a proper diet.

You seem to have things well in hand and are asking questions and not just throwing things in Willy nilly. Just take your fish store advice with caution on what will be compatible. [emoji1360][emoji226][emoji226]

Enjoy your tank you are off to a great start
 
I'm not a great fan of mollies, but those dalmatians are really pretty! It looks to me like you've done a great job with this tank. And I'm with Fresh2o: the fact that the nitrite go back to zero after a day makes me think it's something in your tap water.
 
2 BN Plecos in a 30g may be pushing it ? They are poop machines.

What are you feeding the Plecos ?
They are super cute right now for sure.

Offer the Mollies green peas ( frozen/thawed/skinned ) or other greens so they'll leave your plants alone.

Rams need specific conditions. I'd talk to CoralBandit to see if they'd work for your tank.

Mollies like hard water and some salt.
Rams like high temps and soft water.
Cardinals enjoy warm temps and soft water also.

Your tank looks very nice. I'm not trying to bash your choice of fish.
I'd just say do your research.

I worry when people add Algae eating fish to a brand new tank. I always wonder they'll starve if not fed a proper diet.

You seem to have things well in hand and are asking questions and not just throwing things in Willy nilly. Just take your fish store advice with caution on what will be compatible. [emoji1360][emoji226][emoji226]

Enjoy your tank you are off to a great start

I definitely appreciate the input.

I've been looking at the recommended parameters over at LiveAquaria in order to get ideas for fish that can be added.

I heard about the salt water for the mollies, but I've read that they can just as easily acclimate to a salt-free tank. Is this not the case? When I spoke with the LFS, they said that they keep them in salt-free water, so I figured I was in the clear.

I have some algae wafers for the plecos. They love those things but my concern with them are three-fold: 1) they smell disgusting, 2) they make a COMPLETE mess of my tank, and 3) the mollies seem to like the algae wafers quite a bit as well. I can get over #1 and #2, and #3 doesn't seem to be a huge issue since once the wafers hit the bottom of the tank the mollies... kind of leave them alone. They still go after it but the plecos had about 50% of each of the two wafers to share among themselves after the mollies had their fill. There's still a little left over from my feeding with them yesterday, so I'll probably reduce down to one wafer and see how that goes for today/tomorrow. I think I may also add some blanched veggies (cucumbers seem to be the popular item) for the plecos in the hopes that the mollies won't be too interested in that. I will definitely look into the peas for the mollies though I don't really mind them nipping on the plants - they've done a great job picking off little bits of algae and haven't damaged the plants as far as I can tell.

Speaking of the plecos, those two bastards swam THROUGH the grate that separates the overflow portion of the tank from the main tank yesterday. Took my wife and I a solid 30-45 minutes to get both of them out of there. :nono: I have since added some plastic mesh so that they can't swim through.

I'm keeping my KH at a goal of 5-7 for the time being. I added some crushed coral to a Seachem bag to help with KH which seems to be working well. I think the main issue with the rams is that they seem to prefer more acidic water which mine, at this point, is not (pH runs around 7.7-7.8). However, I expect that will change once I get a high-tech CO2 system. I'm not opposed to getting other fish, I just loved the color of the rams and right now I'm essentially running a black and white theme between the dalmations and the black plecos. Need to shake up the colors a bit (which I'm hoping the tetras will do).

I ended up pulling all the dwarf hairgrass out yesterday. I liked the look and a carpet would've been awesome, but it just wasn't doing well (likely because of the limited CO2 injection). I added a few more plants in their place.
 
so mollies are known to be brackish water fish but they do just as fine in pure freshwater.
Or at least mine do.
As for similar water parameters I keep my mollies with neon tetras and all are doing well.
I think for aesthetic reasons i prefer neon tetras over cardinals, not only for their coloration, but their size. they really highlight eachother. The mollies make the neons seem smaller and the neons make the mollies seem bigger....which to be honest they don't need help with because they are fat eating machines.

my tank (20 gallon long):
6 mollies (1 male, 5 females); though the general rule for mollies is 2 females for one male i really think the having more females is better. less stress and harassment at least for individual females.
15 neon tetras. now the more of any tetra you will have the more natural behavior you will see. I suggest getting at least ten.
1 golden inca snail.
My tank may seem over stocked but I have one 30 gallon filter and 2 different ten gallon filters on it. My mollies and my neons seem to like the flow (though my 30 gallon is baffled with a sponge over the intake valve and output area). My tank is also pretty well planted.

As for bristlenose plecos. it was a good call on you for going for the regular sort. I have tried four different times with albinos and couldn't keep them alive. and could only keep 1 out of two normal bristlenose alive....granted they were very young juveniles when i got them.
 
If you add Rams, they need to be the ones to set the parameters. They can adjust to some differences. But temperature I think is pretty key with them ?

The reason most pick Cardinals over Neons in a Ram tank is temp compatibility.

Neons prefer about 76°F , Cardinals like higher temps. Neons may tolerate higher temps but may die younger ???

Just my opinions based on what I've read and been told. YMMV

That's a lot of water movement for Rams ?

It's normal that the Mollies swarm green foods. If you worry about your Plecos, feed after lights out. And yes, I only feed a 1/2 a wafer.
I have a Farlowella vittata and 2 Otos ( more soon) who compete with my Sterbai Cories and Roselines and Neons who all like to check out Algae wafers. I use Omega One foods.

I highly recommend Repashy foods also. It's gel food that you prepare. Comes in powder form. Fish LOVE the stuff. I was a Beta tester.
 
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