EinreB73
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Back in March I decided to buy my first aquarium. I bought a 5 gallon acrylic tank at Wal-Mart and all the necessary items like thermometer, heater, gravel, and such. I also bought test strips for water testing believing that strips would be easy to use and would work well enough. It was trial and error at first and I lost a couple of fish even though when I tested the water with the strips it showed that it was OK. At one point the water became very cloudy and I asked a local pet store what the problem might be. I was told that I was probably overfeeding the fish and that was causing the tank to become polluted. I mentioned to the clerk that I believed that maybe the gravel I had was too big since it seemed that a lot of the food was falling down between the rocks where the albino catfish couldn't get to it. He agreed and suggested a smaller gravel. I changed the gravel and half the water. This seemed to do the trick and everything was fine for about a month, then when I came home from work one day 2 out of 4 of the fish where dead. Only the catfish and the orange balloon mollie were alive, both the silver and black mollie had died. This time when I tested the water with the strips both the nitrate and nitrite levels were off the chart high. I decided at this time that the problem had to be the strips that I was using to test the water. I bought a test kit and AmQuel+ and Stress Zyme to bring the levels back to normal. Now even after 10 days of doing water changes and adding the chemicals I can not get the levels down even though I only have just the 2 fish and have cut way back on the amount that I feed them. I'm so frustrated at this point I'm ready to just give up all together. I'm doing all the routine maintenance and don't know what else to do. The only thing I can think of is that the tank I have is not a very good tank. Where the water comes back down after being filtered always churns up the food when I feed the fish causing the food to end up at the bottom. Everytime I vacuum the gravel I get a lot of uneaten food coming out. This is the only reason I can come up with as to why the nitrite levels are always high. I would greatly appreciate any advice or suggestions about this because I really don't want to give up. Thanks.