Jendayi
Member
I have a 5 gallon tank that has been running for a few weeks now - a Hex 5 by Marineland. This tank has the bio-wheel in conjunction with it's filter. I had my betta fish in there for the first two weeks, until I removed him to a hospital tank to treat fin rot. When I took my fish out, the ammonia reading was at 1.0 and I kept adding fish flakes to keep the ammonia up.
Last Tuesday I had my first nitrite reading at .25 with the ammonia around 2.0. So I took some water in to my LFS for the manager to test, and he gave me some filter sludge from one of his cycled tanks (yum lol). I added the sludge directly to my tank as he told me to do, then stirred up my gravel every few hours until the filter had taken care of most of the gunk.
Since then, my water values for ammonia and nitrite have remained about the same as listed above, but the nitrAtes have gone thru the roof at a value of 40.
So that is my background. My questions:
- Do my water value readings sound appropriate for where my tank is in it's cycle?
- Is the nitrAte explosion normal?
- What sort of timeframe am I looking at for my nitrIte spike? For the tank to be cycled completely?
- Do I keep feeding the tank the flake food until my fish goes back in?
Thank you for your help and information!
Last Tuesday I had my first nitrite reading at .25 with the ammonia around 2.0. So I took some water in to my LFS for the manager to test, and he gave me some filter sludge from one of his cycled tanks (yum lol). I added the sludge directly to my tank as he told me to do, then stirred up my gravel every few hours until the filter had taken care of most of the gunk.
Since then, my water values for ammonia and nitrite have remained about the same as listed above, but the nitrAtes have gone thru the roof at a value of 40.
So that is my background. My questions:
- Do my water value readings sound appropriate for where my tank is in it's cycle?
- Is the nitrAte explosion normal?
- What sort of timeframe am I looking at for my nitrIte spike? For the tank to be cycled completely?
- Do I keep feeding the tank the flake food until my fish goes back in?
Thank you for your help and information!