Nitrite poisoning?

[Smudgeboss]

Things have been going real slow in my attempt at getting my tank to cycle. I have a 10 gal tank with 3 Gold skirt tetras in it. For about 4 weeks now I have been keeping the nh3 at about 1 ppm by doing a 2 gal pwc twice a day. The no2 has been at .1mg/liter or below all this time.

Now my no2 is starting to climb somewhere between .1 and .3 mg/liter (is that the same as ppm?) The literature with my Hagen no2 test kit (drops method) says that concentrations of .3 can be harmful to my fishies.

As my no2 has started to rise, however, I have not seen any major drop in my nh3 levels, possibly a slight drop to marginally below 1 ppm but not major enough to make one absolutely sure of it. Shouldn't my nh3 be plummeting as the no2 goes up?

Anyway, my fish are acting a little unusual. They are very inactive. They just kind of hang in the water in one spot. They aren't even interested in eating. They have been this way for the last 2 days. Today we tried 2 - 3 gal pwc's hoping to perk them up if it is nitrite poisoning. What are the symptoms of nitrite poisoning? How high should we let the no2 get? Is my test kit right when it says .3 is too high already?

A number of guys have mentioned seeding tanks with water from other healthy cycled tanks to get a bacteria colony. We have friends who have a tank but they have gold fish in it not tropical tetras like ours. Can we use their water to seed our tank or will the goldfish water cause disease or other problems with our little guys?

Thanks for your help guys and gals.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

The water will not seed the tank. If you can get some of their carbon or a filter pad from their tank, that would help. Water doesn't hold bacteria like filters do. Or even some gravel from their tank will speed up the process.

 

[jersysman]

This is one of the problems of doing a cycle with fish in the tank. You have to keep up with the water changes and hope that it doesn't get much higher. The bacteria that eats the ammonia have not multiplied enough yet to get rid of all the ammonia in your bio-load. It is well on the way, though. Keep up with the water changes and hopefully this part of the cycle will not take too long.

 

[bzbee]

Smudgeboss, if your friend does a deep gravel vac, that will suck up a bunch of the bacteria as well. (If the water isn't mucky, it's no use to you.) Dump that mucky water into your tank and you should see both nh3 and no2 drop.