EthanG
Member
Hey All,
Well, I think I made a mistake when I was tried to get my new tank started. I thought that swapping two established filters from my 5.5g (a 20g rated sponge filter and an AC20) to my new 20g would be good enough to "instant cycle". But what I think happened, was while there was enough physical filtration for the new tank, the old tank had one fish, so the bacteria had only grown enough for the bio-load of that one fish, not a planted 20g and several fish. (Is my thinking correct?)
That aside, I now have high levels of Nitrites, low levels of nitrates and high levels of ammonia. When I discovered the levels a few days after starting the tank and adding some fish, I did a 50% change, then 10 hours later another 50% change. That brought them down to 4.0ppm Ammonia, 5.0ppm Nitrite, 5.0ppm Nitrate. Yes, down, they were worse than that when I first tested. This was July 8th.
I ran out and got some Prime, and started the 7-day Stability + Prime regiment to detoxify the Ammonia/Nitrate/Nitrites (prime every 2 days) and establish some new strains of bacteria (stability every day for 7 days). I am now on day 5 of this regiment.
My question, is should I be doing water changes while going through this process to keep removing Ammonia/Nitrites/trates? Any other recommendations?
I will be doing another water test shortly - I haven't tested since this weekend with my API set, just strips.
Well, I think I made a mistake when I was tried to get my new tank started. I thought that swapping two established filters from my 5.5g (a 20g rated sponge filter and an AC20) to my new 20g would be good enough to "instant cycle". But what I think happened, was while there was enough physical filtration for the new tank, the old tank had one fish, so the bacteria had only grown enough for the bio-load of that one fish, not a planted 20g and several fish. (Is my thinking correct?)
That aside, I now have high levels of Nitrites, low levels of nitrates and high levels of ammonia. When I discovered the levels a few days after starting the tank and adding some fish, I did a 50% change, then 10 hours later another 50% change. That brought them down to 4.0ppm Ammonia, 5.0ppm Nitrite, 5.0ppm Nitrate. Yes, down, they were worse than that when I first tested. This was July 8th.
I ran out and got some Prime, and started the 7-day Stability + Prime regiment to detoxify the Ammonia/Nitrate/Nitrites (prime every 2 days) and establish some new strains of bacteria (stability every day for 7 days). I am now on day 5 of this regiment.
My question, is should I be doing water changes while going through this process to keep removing Ammonia/Nitrites/trates? Any other recommendations?
I will be doing another water test shortly - I haven't tested since this weekend with my API set, just strips.