Another noob trying to get started...

[Varuu]

Hi everyone,

First of all thank you all for your help throuout the site it did help me alot so far. Right now however I am lost and can't find the answer I am looking for.

First off, I did all the mistakes one can make...

Bought a fish tank, set it up, trusted my LFS and boom... Disaster

I bought a 20g tank tall i believe it is only 2 feet wide. A Tetra EX20 whisper filter, tetra whisper 20 air pump and a heater (not plugged in at the moment as room temp is 80). Filled it up and added a bottle of "Startsmart complete".
The water was also treated with prime.
As instructed by the LFS i ran the tank for a week empty (just sand and decorations) and brought them a water sample a week later.
They told me I should be fine and can start adding fish.
I guess I got still lucky as he told me to only start with a few zebra danios they had for sale. I got 4 and added them to the tank. Of course doing the whole bag in the aquarium thing and dilluting the bag water with aquarium water over time.

Fast forward 6 weeks.

Now, that I realize I should have cycled the aquarium correctly in the first place and have my own water testing kit (API FW master liquid). I am not sure what to do.
In the meantime 3 of the 4 zebras died and the one left does not look to good either anymore. I tested my water and last week finally started showing nitrites.
Right now my water parameters before water change tonight were 1-2ppm ammonia, 0.5-1 nitrites and 0-5 nitrates. For the last week my nitrites finally started showing and are more towards purple every day but here is the weird thing. My ammonia is steady at 1-2ppm and does not drop even though nitrites are now showing so I must have some of the first kind of bacteria i need?
I did test my tap water and it shows 1-2ppm ammonia also therefor i did the last few water changes with store bought water about 50% every other day to try and save my fish. 2x with store bought water so far. Once I am close to zero I figure I can do a change with my tap water and use that as ammonia supply thats what I read in one of the cycle guides anyway.

So at this point i am not sure if there is anything I should do different to get the ammonia down? or is one fish really producing that much of it? I did even cut back feeding and as I did overfeed for sure in the beginning i am not anymore.

Thank you for any advice.

 

[ashleynicole]

why are you using store bought water? what does the store bought water parameters look like?
If I were you I would just use prime and do water changes with your tapwater.

 

[Varuu]

Because my tapwater reads 1-2ppm ammonia and the bought water is 0 ammonia and I was trying to get it down for the last surviving fish?

 

[ashleynicole]

Is this store bought drinking water or spring water? If its rodi water are you adding a buffer? What is the ph of the tank? Ph crashes can occur during a cycle and kill off beneficial bacteria if your water isn't buffered.

 

[Varuu]

My PH in the tank is 7.8.
The water i used is spring water, never tested ph of this.
My tap water PH is also around 7.8 maybe a little lower.

 

[Varuu]

Also just tested ammonia again and it is between 0.5 and 1 right now after wc about 2 hours ago. nitrite down a little closer to 0.25-0.5 too.

So should I just use tap water for future water changes? I am just worried because of the ammonia levels in the tap water? i read once the filter is established it will be no problem to use the tap water as bacteria will handle it or if during cycling my ammonia drops i can use my tap water to redose more with the tap water is that correct or did I miss understand that?

Thank you for your help

 

[ashleynicole]

I'm not really sure, maybe someone else can chime in. I thought prime would detoxify any ammonia in the tapwater.

 

[jetajockey]

Yup. Prime and other ammonia detoxifying chemicals do detoxify the ammonia but only for approximately 24-48 hours. It's just in a bound state for that time period, it doesn't go away.