lilsoccakid

I finished my cycle, and added 6 neon tetras. today i hav about .4 ammonia and o nitrite and 5 nitrate. should i do a water change?

capekate

Hi lilsoccakid..
You really should strive for a 0 ammonia reading. An O ammonia reading along with a 0 nitrite reading should indicate a cycled tank. Your .5 nitrate reading is ok. So if it were my tank I would definitly do a water change, at least a 50% so that you can get that ammonia outta there and do it all at once, rather than a 25%, re test and find you still have ammonia and have to do another partial water change. Your neon tetras are very sensitive to water perimeters.
good luck! ~ kate

Luniyn

When you say you finished your cycle, how did you cycle the tank besides fishless (i.e. with pure ammonia drops, fish food, etc.?) 6 neon's tetras shouldn't have added enough bio-load to a fully cycled tank to cause a mini-cycle (which is what looks like happened if you are showing ammonia) unless you are over feeding them? When first introducing them to your tank, you should only feed them once a day and only enough that they finish it in just a couple of minutes. You can increase this over time, but just to let the tank adjust it's best to keep it small at first. As to the water change, if you have a high pH (7.5 or higher) in your tank then a larger water change will be necessary to keep your fish healthy. However, even though neon's are sensitive to water perimeters, they are more sensitive to drastically changing water perimeters even if it is for the better. In other words, if they get used to high ammonia levels and then you do a large water change effectively removing most of the ammonia, that would be more stressful for them then just leaving them in the water they are already in. It's always best to do 20%-25% water changes, even if it means having to do it twice over doing large water changes. The only time it would be advisable to do a larger water change is if your pH is high as I mentioned and you aren't using a ammonia locking product like Prime or Amquel+. Other then that, 0.4 ppm shouldn't be too much of a problem and you could get away with a 20%-25% water change now and re-test tomorrow. If it's still at 0.4 or higher then another 20%-25% is in order, and you might have to keep doing that every day until the level gets under control. A mini-cycle won't take as long to get through, however, as the original cycle did, so it shouldn't require to many water changes to get things under control.

lilsoccakid

i checked an hour later and ammonia was at 0, sry guys but thanks!