bruinsbro1997
Aquarium Advice Addict
I would be shooting for <.5 nitrItes, anything above could get your fish sick because of poisoning.
DrConnie said:I keep getting conflicting info on the PWC's. Some people are telling me to do large PWC's, as large and often as possible, some people are telling me that this will cause new tank syndrome. What's best for the poor fish that are left? I'm beyond frustrated at this point and feel horrible that so many fish had to die. Help!!
Do a PWC, the water change only applies to NTS (I believe) when you are just adding in water to make up for evaporated water.
DrConnie said:So how often should I be doing PWC's at this point? And how big of a change?
You are going through "new tank syndrome", that is what is causing these ridiculously high toxin spikes. Doing water changes will not disrupt your cycle as long as you are using a quality dechlorinator. There is no such thing as too many water changes if that is what it takes to keep your ammonia and no2 below .25 at all times.
Read the article I linked, and please immediately do massive back to back water changes until the nitrIte is at or below .25. Anything above that causes tremendous stress, suffering and death (as you've seen).
Just test every single day and do water changes as needed to keep your ammonia and nitrIte levels at or below .25 at all times. You are near the end of your cycle...but this is the most dangerous time for your fish.
DrConnie said:Any chance you could give me advice on dechlorinization? Is it true that you can get rid of the chlorine in tap water by letting it sit out before adding it to the tank? And how long does it need to sit? Should it be capped or open?
50 % or more PWC is not unreasonable when you have nitrites or ammonia.
I hope as I am typing this you are doing back to back 75% water changes with a quality dechlorinator like Seachem Prime. .5 nitrIte is a dangerously high value, and you should keep changing water until it is below .25.
Out of curiosity, where had you gotten the advice about not doing water changes? I also saw on one of your threads that you planned on fishless cycling...was there something that changed your mind? Maybe bad advice from the LFS?
DrConnie said:You got it, LFS advice strikes again!!
As for the fishless cycling, yes...I did that at the beginning and then added fish when the cycle was done. I think I was over feeding and that I added too many fish at a time. Could these two things have been the cause of the problem?
DrConnie said:Every day until levels go down or can it be done more than once a day? I'm not worried about the amount of work involved, I just don't want any more fish to suffer...
Most municipalities use chloramines which will not evaporate out of water, so a quality dechlorinator is absolutely vital. Leaving water sitting out is an old-school method that really doesn't apply anymore and is unnecessary as long as you have a good bottle of water conditioner. We all recommend Seachem Prime since it not only dechlorinates the water...but also temporarily detoxifies the ammonia and nitrItes for 24-36 hours.
Have you been doing water changes since the yank was set up? If so, have you been using any type of dechlorinator? I assume you're on city / county water and not well water?
How did you fishless cycle? Did you just let the tank run empty or were you adding an ammonia source and monitoring levels? There's no way that if you fully cycled the tank you would have reading like this from overfeeding. The only possibility is if you used some sort of medication that destroyed the bio-filter, and/or replaced all of your filter media. Even then...I don't believe we'd be in this situation.