Okay, so I set up a small tank (5 1/2 gal) in about....Mid January I had a lot of issues in the beginning because I took some advice from the fish people at Petco and tried to plant the tank. To leave out the long details it didn't work and I just ended up with dead plants and high levels of ammonia and everything else. So I scrapped the idea of a planted tank restarted and went through the cycling process with 2 white cloud danios.
I had a bunch of issues but finally everything is normal except for a presistant Nitrate problem. I use quick dip test strips to test my tank and so I don't know exact lvls just that everything but the nitrate lvls read normal and safe. The Nitrate lvls read off the scale. I have one fish in the tank,( a white cloud danio) I have no plants, just a heater that keeps the temp normally around 74-78 degrees and a Tetra whisper filter that able to handle tanks of up to 15 gallons plus gravel, a rainbow cave thing and one fake plant.
I've been doing water changes with a grav vac every week the man at Petco said to only do about a 20% water change every week and so that's what I do. But the Nitrate lvls are not coming down and I am out of ideas. The fish people at both Petco and Petsmart don't know what is wrong and don't have any more ideas so I'd like to know if anyone here has a suggestion or an idea of what I can do to fix the issue and maybe what could be wrong with the tank...? I've had someone suggest that I buy a algae eater and that might help but someone else said that wouldn't do anything for my issue, so...any ideas?
All I want to do is get this set up so I can put my beta and white clouds back into the tank...
I had a bunch of issues but finally everything is normal except for a presistant Nitrate problem. I use quick dip test strips to test my tank and so I don't know exact lvls just that everything but the nitrate lvls read normal and safe. The Nitrate lvls read off the scale. I have one fish in the tank,( a white cloud danio) I have no plants, just a heater that keeps the temp normally around 74-78 degrees and a Tetra whisper filter that able to handle tanks of up to 15 gallons plus gravel, a rainbow cave thing and one fake plant.
I've been doing water changes with a grav vac every week the man at Petco said to only do about a 20% water change every week and so that's what I do. But the Nitrate lvls are not coming down and I am out of ideas. The fish people at both Petco and Petsmart don't know what is wrong and don't have any more ideas so I'd like to know if anyone here has a suggestion or an idea of what I can do to fix the issue and maybe what could be wrong with the tank...? I've had someone suggest that I buy a algae eater and that might help but someone else said that wouldn't do anything for my issue, so...any ideas?
All I want to do is get this set up so I can put my beta and white clouds back into the tank...
