nitrite test strips

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keekeemama

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Aug 26, 2004
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i am cycling a new tank and have been using jungle test strips
my nitrites have been testing at about 2.0ppm for the last 3 or 4 days after
adding salt, lowering the ph to 7, and doing 20% water changes everyday
and cutting back on food and the nitrites are not going down at all, out of curiosity i tested my tap water and it is testing exactly the same as my aquarium water
nitrates 20ppm
nitrites about 2.0ppm
is this normal?
i have a 55 gal tank and have lost 2 neons, and a platy i have about 14 other small fish in there that so far are doing good
also when i do the water changes should i vacuum the gravel or not
 
Yes you should vacuum the gravel when doing water changes.

Usually individual tests are more accurate than all-in-one strips.

Why are you adding salt?

You adjusted the PH? You used a PH buffer? That is not needed for captively bred fish, which the vast majority are.

Don't use the PH adjuster any more. It makes the PH unstable and will cause it to bounce up and down. That is FAR more harmful to fish than having a stable PH outside of the "normal" range of their wild ancestors.
 
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i was on another site(about.com, freshwater fish) and it said if you have ammonia or nitrite poisoning treat as follows

Treatment:
Large water change

Add salt, preferably chlorine salt

Increase aeration

Lower pH below 7.0

Use chemical to neutralize ammonia

Discontinue or reduce feeding
so i did it :confused:
 
The reason I'm guessing they suggest lowering the pH is that below 6.8 ammonia becomes ammonium, and in that state it's far less toxic. TMK lowering pH has no effect on nitrites...
 
Treatment:
Large water change<------------------Good Advice. Do that daily.

Add salt, preferably chlorine salt<------Never heard of that. Doesn't make much sense to me. And chlorine is poisonous to fish, so why "chlorine" salt?

[EDIT]The reason why salt is ever added to a freshwater aquarium(and if I'm missing something I would greatly appreciate the information) is that it irritates the fish's "skin". In reaction to this irritation, the fish will increase the thickness of their slime coat. This helps protect the fish from infestation of parasites, such as Ich. Ammonia burns happen to the fish's gills, which don't have a slime coat. So adding salt as a treatment for Ammonia doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe someone more knowledgable will help out with a possible reason for doing this.[/EDIT]

Increase aeration<--------------------Yeah. That might be beneficial. But you most likely already had enough aeration going on. Can't hurt.

Lower pH below 7.0<------------------Bad Advice. Yes, it will turn the ammonia in ammonium but it will also destroy the buffering capability of your tank water. You will have swings in PH which will stress your fish and decrease their chances of survival.

Use chemical to neutralize ammonia<---This may be a matter of opinion. In an extreme case, like say an overcrowded, uncyled tank starting to spike, that might be warranted if someone is unwilling or unable to reduce the fish load. But adding chemicals is usually the last thing you want to do.

Also, if you lower your Ph below 7.0 you won't have any ammonia, just ammonium. So you don't need to neutralize any ammonia.

If you use a chemical to neutralize ammonia, then you don't need to lower your PH.

They cancel the reasons for each other out.

Out of the two, I would neutralize the ammonia before messing with the Ph. But doing this will also cause false readings to occur on your test strips. So then you don't know what the h ell is going on.

Discontinue or reduce feeding<-------Good advice.
 
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I use test strips, too, and have found that if they pass their expiration date, or if they get even a bit damp, they become pretty inaccurate. Have you compared your test strips head-to-head with another test on the same sample of water? That would be the thing I checked first, especially if your tap water is testing at 2 ppm. That is most unusual, IME.

Also, changing pH can be quite stressful for fish and is often difficult to achieve. You'd be better off changing water to keep ammonia down. All kinds of regulatory processes are affected when you start messing with pH, and that can stress fish and predispose them to disease, especially in the presence of ammonia and nitrite.

Finally, note that (other than water changes, which are a universal cure) the treatments for ammonia exposure and nitrite exposure are not the same. For example, some ammonia-neutralizers (e.g., Amquel, Prime) can detoxify free ammonia, even leave it available for the nitrifying bacteria, but those conditioners do nothing to help the fish deal with nitrite. Very low doses of salt (actually the chloride in salt) help fish tolerate nitrite, but does nothing for ammonia.

First thing I'd do is check the accuracy of those test strips.

HTH,
Jim
 
LongTime said:
Prime states that it will also detoxify nitrites.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right. You have to quintuple the dosing, though, don't you? I don't know whether the nitrite will still show up with tests; I don't recall ever hearing anything about that.

Jim
 
The addition of small amounts of salt, sodium chloride, NaCl, is appropriate and good practice when nitrite is present. Nitrite blocks the ability of haemoglobin to carry oxygen, so the fish suffer oxygen lack (dose related - the higher the nitrite, the greater chance of suffocation). Salt blocks the binding of nitrite to haemoglobin, so specifically blocks the toxicity of nitrite in tanks. Only very small amounts are needed -a half teaspoon per gallon is generous. Once the nitrification is mature and nitrite is no longer any issue, the salt can be removed by regular water partials.

HTH
 
JSchmidt said:
Yeah, you're right. You have to quintuple the dosing, though, don't you? I don't know whether the nitrite will still show up with tests; I don't recall ever hearing anything about that.

Jim
Click to expand...

No, you don't have to quint the dose and I don't know about the testing part. My tanks are established and I haven't seen any nitrites for a while.
 
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