my tank parameters are all over the place, help?!

gagaliya

gagaliya

GNOME POWER!
Nov 20, 2005
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www.happyreward.com
I am getting really confused with my tank, it's been established for more than a month now. i cycled with bio spira, everything was fine but recently (last 2 weeks) here's my odd readings. for example:


day a:
amonia 0
nitrite 0.25
nitrate 10ppm

day b

amonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate ~10ppm
(looks cycled)

day c:
amonia 2ppm
nitrite 0
nitrate ~10ppm

day d:
amonia 0.5ppm
nitrite 0
nitrate ~10ppm

day e
amonia 1ppm
nitrite 0
nitrate ~10ppm

etc, it just seems all over the place. What's going on?

1)if i dont feed my fish does it mean they wont produce any amonia?

2)only other thing i can think of is i did a complete clean to my tank. But i followed directions found here and only used my old tank water to rinse the gravels.

The gravels were out of water for about half hr(in one of those filter buckets) while i placed them back into the tank. Would that killed off the bacterias? do they need to be in water ALL the time?
 
i also noticed my tank contains visible particles that look like dust? the water is still crystal clear so it is not cloudy. Just that i see visible dust like particles floating all over my tank. Are those bacteria? they cant be that big i dont think. attached some pic examples

biorb_dust1.jpg



biorb_dust2.jpg
 
Gagalya, you have a fishbowl which is very heavily stocked for the amount of water in it. I am not surprised that there was some damage to the biofilter during the clean which gets amplified due to the lack of water to dilute the wastes. I hope you did not change the filter cartridge also while cleaning the gravel. Just keep doing water changes and wait it out. What worries me is that you ammonia is going up which means that the colony must have been disrupted because the ammonia eaters are virtually indestructable.
 
The particles are not bacteria. Bacteria are so small that even with very high magnification (ie: an oil immerision lens on a light microscope) I sometimes have trouble seeing them in my work. I sometimes need more powerful tools such as an electron microscope to see the bacteria. They are most likely pieces of fish poop, dirt or even small air bubbles suspended in the water.
 
rrkss said:
Gagalya, you have a fishbowl which is very heavily stocked for the amount of water in it. I am not surprised that there was some damage to the biofilter during the clean which gets amplified due to the lack of water to dilute the wastes. I hope you did not change the filter cartridge also while cleaning the gravel. Just keep doing water changes and wait it out. What worries me is that you ammonia is going up which means that the colony must have been disrupted because the ammonia eaters are virtually indestructable.
Click to expand...


i actually did change my cartridge as well because the instruction says:

Will changing the cartridge kill the filter bacteria?
No. The filter cartridge provides mechanical and chemical filtration. Biological filtration is provided by the ceramic media therefore is not affected by the filter cartridge.

http://reef-one.com/filter-system.htm

are they wrong?

my amonia is going up and down, i have no idea what it's doing. For the last couple days it's saying at 0.5

also about cleaning the gravel, i took the fish/shrimp out, took all the gravel out (and put it in a bucket of old tank water), and cleaned the entire tank top to bottom, replaced cartridge, then added water + biosafe, waited until temperature climbed back to normal, added gravel back 1 by 1, added livestock back. I did not clean the gravels in the bowl.

thanks for the advise!
 
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The bacteria would populate everything in a filter that small. I don't see a need to change the cartridge in a tank that small. No use getting fresh carbon with such a small volume of water to deal with. Much easier to just change a lot of water. The mechanical filtration part can be cleaned by simply shaking it clean in old tank water leaving the bacteria in tact. You right now are dealing with a mini-cycle because you removed lots of bacteria changing the cartridge. While they are right that changing the cartridge would not kill off your filter bacteria, with such a high stocklevel per gallon of water, any disturbance to the colony will show up in your water tests. One nice thing though is that water changes are very easy with such a small tank.
 
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My filter cartidge in one of my tanks is more than 6 months old and these fish are the healthiest fish I currently have. For your info that tank is a 10 gallon tank. In another tank I only have a sponge for mechanical and biological filtration no chemical media. In three of my other tanks though I run purigen as my chemical media (two of them heavily planted and one more to deal with my poopmachines (goldfish)). Changing the cartridge every month is more in my opinion the way, that company ensures itself a monthly profit.

The best thing you can do is keep the mechanical filtration media clean by shaking it in old tank water at least every 2 weeks and stick to your waterchanges.
 
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