daniel s

im quite new to tropical fish have a small tank and had several problems with the bog wood discolouring the water i had to boil it several times and found i still had a slight discolour im glad to read all your responses on how fish can benifit from it its taken a big worry off my mind im glad i have found this sight some very knowledgeable people to listen to you will probably be hearing from me hope this is ok any help will be gratefull .

susitna-flower

HI DANIEL, WELCOME TO FISHLORE!

We love new folks, and are glad you joined.....just ask if you need help. What fish do you currently have?

COBettaCouple

Welcome to Fishlore.

daniel s

its a new tank about three weeks old now i let the tank cycle for two weeks and added fish on the end of the second week all seemed fine but know i have added three plattys and two male guppys i seem to be getting high readins and my guppys are very shy now not very active at all i have done two 25% water change and am going too see what happens but any advice is all good thanks for mailing me this sight is so friendly.

kra-z-fishmumm

Daniel your ammonia is toooo high, did you had Bio Spira to cycle your tank so it would cycle faster? If not, then you are probably still in the cycling process and need to be doing daily water changes of 25-50%(no more than that) to keep the ammonia/nitrites down. You saw a spike when you added the fish because of the added bio load (food and poo lol) on what bacteria you do have. Cycling with fish is hard on both of you. Lots of water changes for you and uncycled water stress on the fish (you already said you saw changes in your fish behavior). Time/patience and water changes will work it out.

susitna-flower

Daniel, you stated you cycled your tank for two weeks.....just what did you do to get the nitrogen cycle started? Did you add any used filter media, or gravel from an established tank?
This would help at this point, or using bio-spira, a product that might not be available to you, but the only one I have used that actually works....

Other than that it is just as described, lots of water changes, 25-50% every day until your ammonia and nitrite read 0 again, and your nitrate reading goes up.

Links to read:

http://www.fishlore.com/NitrogenCycle.htm

and

2 Ammonia methods of cycling your fishless tank

As you can see the nitrogen cycle takes awhile, less time if you do it fishless....and less stress on the fish AND you. Good Luck

COBettaCouple

You'll want to do 25-40% daily water changes and use Prime to treat all water. That will help your fish make it through the cycling.

daniel s

hi thanks for all your replies have benn doing as you say with the daily water changes and things dont seem quite so bad answer to your question susitna-flower have used gravel from establised 80gal tank thought this would be ok but that spike was very notice able fish a bit more natural now my readings are
nitrite 0 mg/l
nitrate 10mg/l
gh 25mg/l
kh 3 d
and ph was quite high at 8
any feedback on these readings would be grateful is prime or bio-spira ok to use whilst fish are in my tank ? thanks again

Morph

yes you can use either bio-spira or prime while you have fish in your tank.

daniel s

thank you morph will try to purchase some to help my problem .

Morph

sounds like your tank isn't cycled yet, so if you can get the bio-spira that will do it pretty much instantaneously.

susitna-flower

Daniel, thinking back on your first post, if you started your tank off with gravel from an established tank, it should have had bacteria in it that would have jump started your cycle, IF you kept it moist from the tank you used it from, AND if you continued to "feed" the bacteria once you put it into your tank.

I think this may have been part of the problem, because if you ran your tank for two weeks without any fish in it, or without putting fish food in it, most of the bacteria could have died.

Sounds like things are going better now though. Are you taking a reading for ammonia? I didn't see any results for that.

Once ammonia and nitrite both are reading 0 and nitrates around 10 your tank will be cycled, and you can just do the once a week 25% change. Glad your fish are looking better....

COBettaCouple

What is your ammonia reading? The other readings are good. Unless you have fish that can only tolerate certain pH levels, I wouldn't worry about the pH - the fish you buy locally should be used to the local water that you're using.

Prime is a water conditioner and what we regularly use to treat all of our tap water. BioSpira is a product to introduce vast colonies of the nitrifying bacteria that make a tank cycled. If you use BioSpira - don't do any water changes or water testing for at least 7 days. If your ammonia is also 0, then it would sound like your tank is cycled and you wouldn't need the BioSpira, which can be expensive.

daniel s

hi all took an amonia reading last night and finally it read 0 YEAH i will take further readings just to make sure it stays down so do you think just do my once a week water changes from now on and answer to your question susitna-flower i think your right about the bacteria dying that is what happend, how often should i clean my filter and gravel any help would be grateful thanks.

COBettaCouple

We clean our substrate once a week, when we do the partial water change. We swish the filter media around in the water that we removed from the tank to clean off any big bits of debris and put the media back.

daniel s

thanks again for your advice will do