African Cichlid tank and levels questions
- Thread starter Roody
- Start date
i thought the 90% was a little over the top, but it doesn't hurt anything, just really pointless unless you have high nitrates, under 40 is safe, under 20ppm is great, for anyone new, i wouldn't ever advise large water changes like that unless it is an extreme case where fish are in the tank and somehow ammonia or nitrites spike. It is easy for someone to not add enough conditioner and kill off good bacteria with chlorine in the water, hopefully everything will finish up soon and you can get those fish in there.
Unfortunately there is a lot of conflicting information out there. You guys are more knowledgeable on this subject then me, but several people I personally spoke to both in person and on here and quite a few websites all call for a large change of water after a fishless cycle. I can see where people would be confused wondering what should and shouldn't be done.
In my case I hit 0ppm on the nitrites. I know that for certain. Something went down during the water change though that spiked the levels up because less then a day after that 90% water change they jumped up to 1ppm. Disheartening to say the least.
In my case I hit 0ppm on the nitrites. I know that for certain. Something went down during the water change though that spiked the levels up because less then a day after that 90% water change they jumped up to 1ppm. Disheartening to say the least.
Have you checked your tap water for ammonia,nitrites and nitrates?
More than likely the your cycle was just not completely finished,but it may be your tap,and it is easy enough to check.The nitrites always take the longest to drop to 0ppm.
How long have you been cycling? Are you still adding ammonia,and how many PPM are you getting it up to?How long does it take the ammonia to drop to 0ppm?
Like the others have said,changing 90% of the water certainly won't hurt anything,but then again it is not really necessary,unless the nitrates are very high.I doubt if it had anything to do with your rise in nitrites.
More than likely the your cycle was just not completely finished,but it may be your tap,and it is easy enough to check.The nitrites always take the longest to drop to 0ppm.
How long have you been cycling? Are you still adding ammonia,and how many PPM are you getting it up to?How long does it take the ammonia to drop to 0ppm?
Like the others have said,changing 90% of the water certainly won't hurt anything,but then again it is not really necessary,unless the nitrates are very high.I doubt if it had anything to do with your rise in nitrites.
No, I haven't checked tap water for that yet, but I am going too. I've been cycling for almost 4 weeks. As for the ammonia it drops pretty much overnight to 0ppm.
if everything drops that fast(amonia and nitrites), you probably are fine to add fish. but don't stop dosing until the day before adding fish that way your ben. bacteria have something to feed off of and don't start dying off.
hard to tell, all you can do is keep testing to figure it out, hopefully almost finished with the cycle.
It sounds like you are very close. Usually once the ammonia is being consumed, the nitrite will rise, spike, and then seem to hang on forever. Then suddenly, almost overnight it will be gone. Then you do a WC large enough to get the nitrate down under 10 or so. When I cycled my 1st tank, when it completed the nitrate was 160ppm. So there is where the need comes in to do a very large WC. I didn't change enough the 1st time and wound up having to do another to get it low enough.
