Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fishtank Filtration and Cycling => Topic started by: uv on October 13, 2018, 10:35:02 AM
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It was 6 weeks since I setup my fish tank with fish-in-cycle. I still read ammonia and nitrate around 0.5 to 1ppm each with 50% water changes 2-3 times a week.
Today I changed 75% water and my readings as below. Now, how far my cycling done in order to add more fish? Also I need advise on high nitrates, high KH and low CO2. They consistently record the same. Sounds like my tap water has got nitrates though it was not so high when I started my tank few weeks ago.
Nitrate 50 ppm
Nitrite 0.09 ppm
Ammonia <0.25 ppm (bottom tube more like 0 ppm but towards top it is <0.25 ppm
GH 13 dH
KH >20dH
PH 8.5
CO2 2ppm
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You need to have zero ammonia and zero nitrite for 7 days in a row, without doing water changes before getting more fish. This is more important at high pH like yours as a larger proportion of the ammonia is in the toxic form compared to pH below 7.
However.....
What are you using to test ammonia? Your results look like a strip tester except that the all-in-one strips can't have ammonia on them (the colour developing time is different from the rest). The reason I ask is because with liquid ammonia testers, the colour of the water depends on the type of light it is read under and also the way the testing person's eye perceives the colour - some people never see the zero colour. This doesn't apply to strip tests, only liquids.
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I am using liquid test for Ammonia and test strips for the others.
Is my water parameters are reasonable? Especially on Nitrates, KH and CO2?
Also, feeding once a day keep my ammonia levels down and cycle quicker? I am feeding twice a day.
Thank you
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Nitrate is a bit on the high side - it should really be kept below 20 ppm. However, there may be quite a lot of nitrate in your tap water so you need to test that as well. If your tap water nitrate is above 20 ppm there is little you can do to get it lower, though using lots of live plants could well help.The only other alternative for reducing the nitrate in the water you put into the tank is to prefilter it with nitrate removing media.
Your high GH and KH are consistent with your high pH. KH is not important except where it is very low when it can get used up and allow the pH to crash. With yours being high, you can forget about KH.
GH is very important to fish, and is often referred to as just 'hardness'. Your hardness is pretty hard, so you need to keep fish that like hard water.
Back to ammonia and nitrite - both of these must be zero or the fish will suffer harm. The 0 and 0.25 levels in liquid ammonia testers can be hard to distinguish, but anything over 0.25 is definitely not zero.
You said your pre-water change ammonia and nitrite were 0.5 to 1.0. With reading this high you need to do at least 75% water changes per day. In fact you should test every day and do a water change whenever the reading is above zero.
If you don't have any live plants, I recommend that you get some. These are your best friend while cycling. They will take up ammonia and unlike bacteria they do not convert it into nitrite, they use it to make proteins etc. Getting live plants should reduce both your ammonia and nitrite levels, and with enough plants they'll reduce them to zero.
Water sprite can be planted in the substrate or used as a floating plant, and when used floating is particularly good at removing ammonia. They also need good light and carbon dioxide both of which are plentiful on the water surface.
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Forgot about CO2 in your readings.
I have no idea what the range for this is as I've never used anything that tested it!
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Thanks Sue, very helpful and detail.
I tested my tap water for nitrates in the past which read below 10 ppm but seeing 50 ppm today after 75% water change - I need to test this again.
I am looking for hard to very hard fish so this should suit my water parameters.
I have two Jave Fern in the tank at the moment. The leaves are slowly growing roots.
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If your tap water nitrate is that low you need to do a few very large water changes to get the tank reading down to the same level as your tap water. Nitrate levels over 20 ppm cause long term damage.
Can I ask, you have small readings for both ammonia and nitrite and your nitrate level is at 40 ppm higher than your tap water. What size is the tank and how many fish do you have, numbers of each species?
We normally aim to stop nitrate going higher than tap water level plus 20, so in your case water changes should be often enough and big enough to stop nitrate ever getting above 30 ppm. I ask because with 50% water changes twice a week, nitrate should not be that high unless you are very overstocked.
Java ferns are slow growing plants that won't take up much ammonia. To have a real impact you need fast growing and/or floating plants.
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I have 4 male guppies at the moment, feeding twice a day. My tank size is 54l, 60x30x30cm.
Before 75% water change today my nitrate readings almost same as now. I mix hot/ cold tap water to bring down to reasonable temperature.
I will add a few water sprite plants. Are there any plants that absorb nitrates? My substrate is gravel and is not plant friendly so I am looking for easy care with minimum light.
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4 guppies in 54 litres should not cause nitrate to go up that much. And you shouldn't have ammonia or nitrite with this few fish after 6 weeks.
Plants will use nitrate as fertiliser. They prefer ammonia because they have to convert nitrate into ammonia inside the plant to process it so it takes less energy for them to use ammonia. But once they've taken up all the ammonia they'll start taking up nitrate.
If you can tolerate it, even duckweed would help ;D
Can I check some things with you please.
When you do a water change, do you run the water straight in via a hose or do you use a bucket to refill it?
Which brand of dechlorinator do you use?
At what stage do you add dechlorinator to the new water? With a hose, most people add the whole dose of dechlorinator to the tank before starting to refill; with a bucket you should add enough dechlorinator to treat the volume of the bucket to each bucketful of new water.
Do you routinely add any other chemicals to the tank besides dechlorinator?
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Sounds like my tap water has high Nitrates this time. Direct tap water reading is 35 ppm, Nitrites is 0.15. Surprisingly Chlorine is 0.1 ppm.
I use bucket method and treat with Tetra Aqua Safe into the bucket to the volume required for that water quantity.
I did not use any other chemicals so far.
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I should say this, when I add my fish 6 weeks ago my lfs tested the water and is clean with all readings.
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If you took some water in as you bought the fish, the water would have been perfect because there were no fish to make it un-perfect yet.
One thing you could try is a bottle of Seachem Prime and use that as your dechlorinator. It detoxifies both ammonia and nitrite, though they do still show up in the tests in the detoxfied form. The detoxification lasts somewhere between 24 and 48 hours so you still need to do the water changes but at least the fish will be safe between water changes. Use the dose rate on the bottle, don't be tempted to overdose.
If you have nitrate in your tap water, the simplest thing is to just live with it. As long as you get ammonia and nitrite to zero.
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I will change my dechlorinator as per your suggestion and also add water sprite to the tank. Thank you
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How did you get the reading of 2ppm CO2 out of interest?
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I use Tetra easy strips 6 in 1 and read using its mobile app. This gives me CO2 reading though it is not indicated on the package.
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In addition to adding some more live plants to control Nitrates can I use this Sponge Filter https://www.amazon.co.uk/Juwel-Filter-Sponge-Nitrate-Compact/dp/B000G04LXG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539603995&sr=8-1&keywords=juwel+compact+Nitrate+Removal+Filter+Sponge (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Juwel-Filter-Sponge-Nitrate-Compact/dp/B000G04LXG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539603995&sr=8-1&keywords=juwel+compact+Nitrate+Removal+Filter+Sponge)?
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I used to have a Juwel tank, and extensive reading said that this sponge did nothing for nitrate, and the advice was to treat it like a plain sponge.
The only way to remove nitrate from the water apart from plants is to use a nitrate filter to pre-treat the water, like this one https://www.pozzani.co.uk/water-filters-185/product_info.html
Or use reverse osmosis water and add remineralisation salts (not table salt). The RO process takes everything out of the water leaving just pure water; but all the fish in the aquarium trade need some minerals so they have to be added to RO water in the form of remineralisation salts. Depending on the fish, the water has to be made soft or hard, and the same amount of salts per litre water must be used at every water change. The RO water and the salts do work out expensive over time.
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Thanks Sue, I live with adding more plants in for now and see drop in readings before considering Pozzani filter.
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You can use a mixture of RO and tap water to bring down the Nitrate levels. My tap water Nitrate level is around 40 ppm. I use a 50/50 tap/RO mixture which effectively halves the nitrate level to a more reasonable 20 ppm.
I use around 70 litres per week which costs about a tenner. So it is an expensive option if you have a large volume to change.
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I am using liquid test for Ammonia and test strips for the others.
Hi uv,
Would you please confirm which liquid test kit you are using for ammonia? Also, are the Tetra test strips in date? I have never used the test strip/mobile phone approach; there are a few variables that could lead to erroneous readings. Very nervous about the 2ppm CO2 measurement but this is probably the least important reading right now.
JPC
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Couldn't find water sprite or honwort in any of my lfs. Are there any other plants work in the same way consume Ammonia?
Or any fast growing plants do the same thing?
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Any fast growing plants will do, but if you can leave them floating on the surface they'd do even better. I have both water sprite and hormwort floating on my main tank, but plants like elodea work just as well.