Please help-- in head over heels at this point

kai_blake

kai_blake

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Apr 11, 2011
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Colorado
Real Name
Kai
Ok, so let me preface this with: wow.

I raised Koi and goldfish in a naturally filtered pond prior to having live bearers so testing ph/alks etc were never really needed.

About a month ago I purchased a 30 gallon tank / stand off craiglist, set up the corresponding penguin pump and transferred my current fish from thier orb to the tank to do a cycle. I have never cycled a tank before. I took the word of the petsmart folk and cycled the tank with my Blackmoore and two relatively small feeder type goldies my daughter won at school for two weeks before adding live bearers. I was using a type multi testing strip which only revealed a slight hardness in my water and some alkalinity.

I added two red wags, two scarlet wags , 5 pb mollies, a small sucker pleco, 3 small corys and originally 7 ghost shrimp based on the constraints of my tank.

About a week ago I went to Denver Fish den when one of my mollies gave birth to still born fry and subsequently ate them looking for help. The owner tested my water sample and told me petsmart had taken me for a spin. He said I was in for a rough ride until my tank truly cycle somewhere between 4-6 weeks total in the mean time his concern was nitrates and ammonia killing my fish. He instructed me to clean the rock for food detritus and do a 1/3 water change and retest in a week unless my fish developed bug eye or any other stress indicator.

The good news is none of my fish show any stress indications-- other than the wierd thing with my molly. She gave birth again to about 15 more fry, none of which survived? All fish are healthy , clean and erect top fins, clear eyes and no red/bloody gils.

Bad news, tested the tank today and these are the results fro the api kit my boyfriend gave me:
Ammonia was pegged at 8.0
NitrAtes -0
NitrItes -0
Low range ph was closest to 7.6
High Range was closest to 8.0

I know with the cycle ammonia, nitrates, nitrates are going to spike until the biological balance in the tank is better ... but I dont want to kill my fish. Should I do another 30 percent change, is there a product I can use that will enhance the biological filter? Please help, I feel I was taken advantage by people who mis-educated me and profited from our naivety!
 
Yikes. Sorry you got taken for a ride by the pet store. :( I'm sure others will have suggestions too, but if it were me, I'd do a 50% change immediately (and probably another 25% every couple days until you get that ammonia down). I don't know of any product that will enhance your biological filter enough to take care of the extremely high ammonia you have right now. Maybe once you get it down some you can think about increasing biological media.
 
Try seeing if you can get some "seeded" filter media from the LFS or from a local hobbyist. But the main thing is to keep up the water changes during the cycle.
 
With an ammonia level of eight I would do an immediate 50% w/c. If you have Seachem Prime for your dechlorinator I would double dose it to detoxify the remaining ammonia. 24 hours later do another 50% w/c using normal dosage of prime. Check your ammonia levels two hours after each water change.

Continue water changes and prime treatments until ammonia is 0.25 or less.

Good Luck
 
My fish care arsenal is the following:
Top fin tap water dechlorinator/ top fin water conditioner which I have used with each water change.
I also have nov aqua water conditioner and amquel+ from the original owner?
ph up
accu clear and clean sweep for cloudiness

I feel so lost;( will my dechlorinator work or do I need to track down seachem?
 
@ verbal: Seeded media? I also was reading that if you sink driftwood it helps balance the tank, is that true?
 
"Seeded media" = filter element, bio balls, even some substrate from a tank that has been up and running for a while. Your issue is that you have lots of fish that are generating waste, but no beneficial bacteria to convert the ammonia to nitrites (bacteria colony 1) and then the nitrites to nitrates (bacteria colony 2).

The only way to get these two bacteria colonies up and running is to wait, or "seed" them from a tank that has already cycled and has colonies of both kinds of bacteria. In the mean time, all that fish waste is adding to the ammonia level, so your only recourse is to remove it manually via water changes. Any way you can temporarily remove some of the fish to reduce the bioload in the tank?
 
@michiganman

I only had the orb from my goldies and I gave that to my niece when we put everyone together. I am going to do a 50 percent waterchange. Do y'all think it would be beneficial to dose with the Amquel? Literally there is nothing else in the tank, not even salt per fish den.

When you say substrate do you mean the goop and such from an established tank?
 
All the jazz for cloudiness and ph up is junk and could possibly do more harm than good. Water changes are your best friend now, keep testing the water your goal is to maintain your ammonia as close to 0 as possible. Worry about ammonia, nitrItes and nitrAtes right now and forget ph, alk and all that other stuff for the moment. Good luck and remember water change, water change, water change :)
 
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