Aquarium Problems: HELP!!!

happychem said:
Test your tap water as well. For the pH test, place some tap water in a shallow bowl for a few hours (or overnight), then test the pH. It is possible to have some small amount of nitrate through the taps, but I'd be really surprised if as much as 40ppm was coming from the taps. Don't worry about the nitrate too much though. The NO2 is what we want to address.

Start by doubling your water changes, 50% twice daily, once in the morning, once at night. Next, add about 1tsp. of salt for each 5 gallons of tank water. This will help compete with the NO2 in the fishes' gills. It's not strickly good for the cories, but balance the presence of Cl- vs. NO2, I think that salt is the lesser of the evils. Bring the concentrations up slowly. At your next water change, add 1 tsp. for every 10g. The next change, after the water change, add the same amount. After a day, bring your dose up to 1tsp. per 5 gallons.

Someone should double check my dose recommendation, I erred to the side of caution, but I always forget the exact amount.
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I'll start the tap water test tonight. And yes, from a previous post I read that I should double the 50% water changes daily. So I'll also start doing that as well.

Salt - You say that the salt is not good for the corys? The tank only has 4 fish in it total and 2 are corys. I removed the gold barbs altogether. Is this a good course of action then? What is contributing to these high levels of Nitrite?

Just to make sure I've got the salt amounts correct:
Tonight - 50% water change = 10 gals removed. Add in 10g new conditioned water. Add in 1 tsp salt for every 10 gals, so 1 or 2 for the 20 gal tank? I just a little confused on whether the 1tsp of salt is in relation to the new or total water. On next water change, same as above. After that, start uping the amount of salt to 1tsp per 5 gal.
 
Actually, the amount of chloride needed to help fish tolerate nitrite is very little... I've seen a teaspoon per ten gallons recommended most often, and even that was considered (by some more experienced folks) to be more than enough.

Jim
 
So... which is it? 1tsp salt per 10 gals or per 5gals? And would that include all 20 gals or just the water that's been added?
 
Suzabbe, just so it's clear. The actual salt will not evaporate from your tank, so once you've done the initial dosage of salt (enough to treat the full 20 gallons), you will only want to add enough salt back into the tank to treat however much water you are replacing with the water change.

No more salt than you're talking about, it shouldn't be a big worry, but just didn't want you adding enough salt for 20 gallons each time you did a 50% water change or something :)
 
Great! Thanks guys! And thanks for that link! Yes, the whole treating the water that's replaced or all is where I keep getting confused! :p

I got more readings to post last night that I'll share. Looks like somethings are improving already:

Ammonia .5
Nitrate 20
Nitrite 3.0
Tot Hardness 120
Alkalinity 40
pH 7.4 (This could be off because the strip is hard to read for pH, I may need to get some other tester to test for it. The colors are so close together that I think I'm picking the wrong colored squares)

Oh, and I found a little itty bitty snail in my tank. Where in the world did this come from? When I buy fish I never put the store water directly in my tank. Is this ok to have that snail in there? It just showed up on the rear glass when I was changing water.
 
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