Regulating pH

Keep doing the daily water changes at 40% until you get the lvls down to acceptable, then see how fast they rise. If it continues to rise rapidly, cut down on the amount of food you give them. More food = more waste = ammonia factory.

"Cycling" is the process where beneficial bacteria breaks down ammonia generated by fish and waste into nitrites, then from nitrite to nitrate. A tank is cycled when there is sufficient bacteria to keep both ammonia and nitrites down to zero, unless the fishload is high. So in a cycled tank, you mainly worry about nitrates which is not broken down by anything and needs to be removed by water changes.
 
phanmc said:
Keep doing the daily water changes at 40% until you get the lvls down to acceptable, then see how fast they rise. If it continues to rise rapidly, cut down on the amount of food you give them. More food = more waste = ammonia factory.

"Cycling" is the process where beneficial bacteria breaks down ammonia generated by fish and waste into nitrites, then from nitrite to nitrate. A tank is cycled when there is sufficient bacteria to keep both ammonia and nitrites down to zero, unless the fishload is high. So in a cycled tank, you mainly worry about nitrates which is not broken down by anything and needs to be removed by water changes.
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Thanks!! Was starting to worry a bit there not knowing what to do. Will do another water change tonight.

I'm going to print off some stuff on cycling, my tank hasn't been cycled. Unfortunately the tank was purchased over a year ago, the shop didn't tell us anything about cycling. I've only really just started to learn how important water quality is for my fish to survive. If I do it now, its not going to kill my fish is it??
 
If your tank has been running for a year, then the bacterias are already well established unless you've started over from scratch in the past month. The cycling process happens naturally, when people try to cycle a new tank we're just trying to induce the process without hurting the fishes.

Its likely that the fishes are producing more waste than your filter (which houses most of the beneficial bacteria) can handle. This can be due to overstocking or overfeeding. How much and how often do you feed them? Do they finish everything off in a matter of minutes?
 
I have the fish as listed below. I feed 1 small shrimp pellet for the shark and a couple of flakes of food crushed for the rest of the fish. The flake food appears to go fairly quickly, within in a minute or two, but the pellet might lie around for a while. The shark seems to be a bit picky, he'll eat a little bit of it then swim away, and come back for more a minute or two later. The other fish will go for the pellet when given the chance. I feed twice a day, is this too much??

Once a week i'll give them about a 1/4 of a small block of frozen bloodworm.

I also recently introduced plants, some of the leaves have died, fallen off and collected around the filter, which i cleared out last night. Could that also affect the levels?
 
feeding lightly twice a day, which is what you're doing, should be ok but for now lets cut it to once a day until you lower your ammonia level and have it stay down. Removing dead and decaying plant matter is also a good idea.
 
I think there is something wrong with the water you are using. Are you 100% sure that there is nothing being added to your water? Your tank should be fully cycled by know unless there is something in the water that is contiually killing the bacteria. I find it hard to believe that you are using staight rainwater for all your drinking and cooking with no chemical purification. Maybe I missed it, but what kind of filter are you using in your tank?
 
100% sure nothing is added. We live in the country (30kms from town) so there is no water supply. It rains, it hits the roof of the shed, it runs off the roof into a pipe which goes in to a concrete tank which sits amongst some bushes and trees on the property we live on. There maybe some minerals in it, I think the guy at the petshop said something about copper and/or iron??
I tested the water out of the tap and there was no nitrates or ammonia and the pH was around 6.6-6.8
Is it possible I was killing the bacteria by adding all the ammo lock and pH 7.0 stuff?? I don't do that now, have done about 3-4 water changes without adding those things.
My tank is an Aqua One AR-380, not quite 10 gallons. It came as a package, filter, heater, lights etc. There is a pipe that runs down to the bottom of the tank and it has a "sock" that prevents leaves from being sucked up the pipe, then the water goes up the pipe and is filtered between two rectangle filers, one with white "stones" in it and the other has black "stones" in it then it runs back into the top of the tank. Best description I could give, I tried finding a picture of it on the net, but there was none that showed all the pipes and stuff.
 
If your water has heavy metals in it, treat it with water conditioners like NovaQua or SeaChem Prime.

About your filter and your filter media, the white stones sounds like the biological filter (where bacteria grows) while the black stone is carbon. The carbon needs to be replaced monthly in order to be effective (not really required in the first place) but do you replace the white stones as well? If it is indeed the biological filter then replacing it would be bad as you've effectively removed the majority of your bacteria colony.
 
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