Please help-- in head over heels at this point

The water change cut the ammonia down to 2ppm, high range ph is still steady at 8.0, nitrate is 0,Nitrite is 0. I am treating with Amquel+ to hold over the ammonia until i can get some gravel from my boyfriends tank when I go back up the hill tommarrow. And the prego mollie seems steady for now. Shes had just shy of 30 babies that were stillborn. I'm supposing she is done for now?

Good night and thanks for the help
 
Discus breeders do 50%-60%-70% daily....WC's are good, not bad. Dilution is the solution. I'd be doing 50% per day until your tank is cycled.
 
rtbob said:
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
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I agree, prime was a lifesaver for me when I did an oops with one of my tanks, also tetra makes an ammonia safe product that is supposed to convert the ammonia to a safe form, but prime every 24 hours should do the trick. Once you get the ammonia below 1ppm I would add a bottle of stability or tetra safe start to give your biological filter a boost. Good luck.
 
Heres the thing to keep in mind about water changes. Your fish will produce ammonia. You can cut back on feeding to keep their production down, but you won't stop it entirely. Especially since you can't cut back on feeding forever. You can do it for a week or two, but eventually you'll start starving the fish. Hopefully your cycle will be kicking in enough to start picking up some of the load by then.

Water changes tend to reduce you ammonia/nitrites by the percentage of the water changed. A 10-20% reduction from 2+ is nothing to the fish really, especially considering they may produce that much in a day or two. A 50% or higher does dent that quite a bit if done regularly (every day or two).

Also keep in mind that the fish can handle the toxic levels for a given amount of time (depends on the strength of the individual fish). They can only keep up the battle for so long though, and when their defenses come down it tends to hit rather hard. That is why keeping those numbers as low as possible (you really ideally don't want to be over .25-.5ppm, but without a bio-cycle that will be very hard) is so important.
 
I am afraid that your ammonia levels are so high that 10 to 15 percent a day is not going to be enough. I would go with the 40 to 50 percent a day or maybe even twice a day until you get that nice pale yellow test result we all like to see. Once you get it to that point, you will have to test frequently to see how long it takes the tank's occupants to raise the ammonia levels again...I don't think it will be as many as 3 days...you might get away with changes every other day. Don't forget that once the ammonia eating bacteria is established, you will be testing for nitrites and will then be doing water changes to control that (hopefully not so frequently.) I am not personally acquainted with any of the chemicals mentioned so am +1 on water changes, water changes, water changes.
 
I can get on board with that... but how will I know when my bacteria is able to deal? I figured from this point I would need to do 50 percent water changes to keep the ammonia as low as possible.
 
Basically the way you will know you have a balanced cycle is when you get readings of 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and some nitrate consistantly. The quickest will be 0 ammonia, but nitrite is even more dangerous. Nitrite takes about 2-3x as long to balance out. Once you get 0 readings on those two consistantly then you will be cycled. Nitrate, unless you are heavily planted, will always be detected. As long as you don't let nitrate get into the upper levels (think 80 and 100 are the upper two readings) of the chart it should be fine.
 
Raising pH with a high ammonia level is lethal - ammonia toxicity increases exponentially with pH.

Mollies do very badly in soft water. You indicated that your test strip showed soft water. That won't help either.

I'd suggest 80% water changes, not piddling around.
 
Karlth:
That would have been a typo on my part. My water has been from day one as hard as the dip chart coloring would indicate. PH has been steady the entire time at no more than 8.0 my last water change was 12 hours ago and I leave in about 15 minutes to start the drive up the hill to my boyfriends house at which time I should be able to get a decent amount of the dirtied gravel to try and kick start my colony's:
Testing from all in one strip 7:35 am mst
no chlorine, nitrate,nitrite
hard to very hard water
very alkaline, alkaline overall ph

via my api kit:
Ammonia 1 ppm
nitrite 0
nitrite still primarily 0 but getting closer in color to the next bracket for 5.0 ppm
over all ph steady at 8.0
 
Sounds like the first colony might be gettting started, if your nitrites are creeping up. Good luck!
 
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