Can anyone make sense of my water params?

sophiecat22

sophiecat22

AC Members
Jul 25, 2006
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St. Pete, FL
My 10 gallon has been going through the stangest cycle I've ever experienced. I was expecting the ammonia levels to rise first, then the nitrites, followed by a drop in ammonia and nitrites and a spike in nitrates. Thats usually how it goes, correct?

Well not in my tank. First the nitrites(0.25 ppms) and nitrates (5 ppms) went up. My nitrite levels continued to spike as my ammonia levels rose (ammonia went from 0 to 0.25 ppms and then to 0.4 ppms) and nitrite topped off at about 0.5 ppms. Ammonia then went from 0.4 ppms to 0.1 ppms. When I tested today, my ammonia had spiked to nearly 1 ppm and my nitrites were at 0 ppms. Nitrates haven't moved from 5 ppms. The big spike in ammonia happened AFTER a PWC believe it or not and was actually 0 ppms before the water change which makes absolutely no sense to me at all. I would say that its the water conditioner that I'm using, but I've used it before with no problems. (note: I switched to AmQuel but switched back to my usual Aqua Safe after getting some other strange test results...seems like nothings changed though.... :huh: )

My pH has also been steadily moving from 7.8 to 7.4. It doesn't drop rapidly, just slowly over a few days. But it comes out of the tap at about 8. I'm curious as to whether this is a big enough change in pH to harm my fish (4 zebra danios).

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Steph
 
did you use some gravel or filter media from an established tank? that might have dampened your cycle to just the nitrite phase. i've had that happen in my tanks after I changed 100% of my gravel.

as for the ammonia spike after water changes, Amquel and other products that neutralize chloramines take the -amine part and turn it into an ammonium. Ammonium exists with ammonia in equilibrium in normal situations (with more ammonium, the less toxic one, at lower temp and lower pH). But your test kit cannot distinguish between ammonia (NH3) and the less toxic ammonium (NH4+) so it reads a high level of ammonia.

i wouldn't worry about the ammonia, in that case, and just continue to do water changes to remove nitrite.

as for pH, I'm not good at that one. I've heard that as much as 0.5 change in pH daily is OK for fish. It's normally how much pH changes in planted tanks due to CO2 injection during the day. I don't have any personal experience with that, though, since I'm using Excel and not CO2 right now.
 
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