Advice on next move

[Somerchooks]

Hi all , I set up a 100l tank in July , I added tetra safe and waited a day and then put some fish in , I know now that was a stupid beginners mistake . Around 1 month ago I started losing fish , so I went to my LFS with a water sample she said I had to much nitrite and recommended that I do a 50% water change right away followed by 2x 30% water changed over the next 2 days which I did , now the nitrites have dropped to inbetween 0.25 -0.5 , the LFS said this wasn’t to bad and recommended that I buy seachem stabiliser and prime , I started with the stabiliser 5 days ago and couldn’t get hold of any prime until yesterday . Is this the right thing to do or should I be doing anything else . Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Andy Sager]

What you are doing is called a " Fish in" cycle which means that you are going to need to do water changes to keep the nitrites and ammonia from getting to a toxic level for the fish. By diluting these chemicals, the tank is safe for the fish but it takes longer for the "cycle" ( a.k.a. Biological filter bed) to complete. It's not unusual for this to take 2-3 months but I've also seen it take 5-6 months. It takes as long as it takes. Using products like PRIME will help on an emergency basis but they only work for 24-48 hours so doing water changes is the better option. You need to keep these levels under 0.5 ppm combined for the water to be safe. You will know when the tank finishes cycling when the ammonia and nitrites have gone up then down and the nitrates are going up. ( assuming that there are no nitrates in your source water so test this water to confirm no nitrate. ) This is a picture of the entire cycling process in graph form. You will see the end result of 0 ammonia and nitrite and a rising nitrate level.
Once you have this result, that's when you can add more fish slowly to the tank. You want to keep the nitrate level under 40 PPM. This is done with water changes, certain live plants, chemical media or nitrate removing pads.

Hope this helps

 

[Somerchooks]

Thanks Andy , it does help a lot . It’s showing Ammonia 0 and just under the 0.5 nitrite . Do I need to do say 30% water changes every day or every second day ? . I bought prime as the LFS recommended it but she also said the same as you that it only last for 24-48 hours but I could put in another does and it would continue for another 24hours is that wrong ?

 

[Andy Sager]

Thanks Andy , it does help a lot . It’s showing Ammonia 0 and just under the 0.5 nitrite . Do I need to do say 30% water changes every day or every second day ? . I bought prime as the LFS recommended it but she also said the same as you that it only last for 24-48 hours but I could put in another does and it would continue for another 24hours is that wrong ?

Personally, besides using it for conditioning the new water, I would only use the PRIME as an emergency because you didn't have the time to do a water change. I would not depend on it over doing water changes. As for how much to change, it's a math problem. ( Now you know why you need to learn math in school. LOL ) If you change 1/3 of the water, the level will reduce only by 1/3. So if you do a 30% water change, what you need to do is test daily to see how long it takes for the level to rise back up to that 0.5 level and that's how often you need to change water until the tank finishes cycling.

 

[Somerchooks]

Ok Andy thx for your advice , much appreciated.