dhenn

Ok ... I'm back with another question. The guppies are doing fine now and there is no ich left in the tank. We're past week 2 and I've lowered the temperature a bit down to about 80 degrees.

I added the carbon back into the filter pouch (cause I thought I was supposed to do that) and now the nitrites are a little higher than they should be. We've been doing daily water changes trying to get this back to normal. It's been about 5 or 6 days.

I'm now reading (here ... should have done this reading first), that maybe I shouldn't have bothered putting the carbon back in. I doubt there was any medicine left in the tank at all after 2 weeks of water changes (it's only a 10 gallon tank and we were doing 20 o 25% water changes daily with no added medicine after the first dose).

Anyway, I'm wondering, should we go get some other type of media to put in the filter bags? There is still a lot of dust particles floating around in the tank (probably from the gravel my daughter really likes). It's driving me nuts as I'd love to get that dust out of there. The dust seems to be too small for the filter pouches to catch (which is why I put the carbon back in in the first place).

I don't really want to replace the filter but if it would still work with some other type of media or bag in it, I'd have no problem swapping that out. Can that be done? use one type of filter and put some different type of media in it?

Thanks a bunch!

dhenn

I should probably also add that the ammonia levels are 0 and the nitrate levels are just starting to come up above zero. We do use strip test kits for safety reasons (don't want my daughter messing with chemicals or dealing with spills in her bedroom). I realize they COULD be a bit off though.

sirdarksol

You can empty the carbon out of the bags and instead fill them with filter floss. It's pretty cheap stuff, and it does a good job of cleaning stuff out of the water.

On a side note, is it actually nitrites that are going higher, or is it nitrates? This is a very important distinction. Nitrites should always be at zero. If they aren't, something happened to the tank's cycle.

dhenn

Thanks SDS,

yes - unfortunately it's the Nitrites that are rising into the low end of the stress zone (the test strip is showing a very pale pink instead of pure white ;( ). I'm thinking that the carbon somehow kicked it into a mini cycle which is what started me looking for carbon replacements. I didn't change out the pouch when I put the carbon in because the pouch itself was only 2 weeks old. I did rinse the pouch and carbon in the water I had just changed out but still ... some sort of tank cycle happened.

I will go to the store and see if we can find some filter floss.

sirdarksol

Ah! That probably did it. If you rinsed the pouch in tap water, the chlorine/chloramine likely did what it was supposed to do, and killed the bacteria off.
Keep up those water changes, as any amount of nitrites is stressful to fish. Does your filter not have two separate pieces of media in it? Most filters come with a piece of biological media (usually a coarse sponge) and then the carbon bags.

dhenn

No, I rinsed the pouch in water I had just taken out of the tank before putting it and the carbon back in the filter. Maybe I didn't rinse it thoroughly enough though.

The only thing the filter has is a plastic piece that the pouch attaches to and whatever we put inside the pouch. I think you could probably say the pouch looks like a course type of sponge. The carbon goes directly into it though without another pouch.

This is what the replacement pouches look like (maybe I'm using the wrong term?):

http://www.petsmart.com/product/inde...:referralID=NA

The carbon comes separately and you just pour it into the pouch.

Thanks! - I'm constantly learning here and it's wonderful to have some place to go where I can trust the answers I get!