More than one WC a day

Any thoughts on multiple water changes a day?

Struggling with nitrites in my qt. It is a little less than 10g (plastic container) with a small sponge filter (seeded from previous successful qt and then sitting in my display tank), a few fake plants, and no substrate. Started with 7 skirt tetras, one died, got a replacement, it died along with another of the originals so down to 5.

The first week was good, zero ammonia and zero nitrites. Ammonia is still zero but nitrites spiked to about 1ppm. Water change yesterday and again today, treating new water with Prime and Stability.

With nitrites spiking high, should I do a big daily wc or multiple smaller changes daily?

 

Many people do large water changes of over 50% at one time. Personally I don’t. I am happy and so are my fish with a 3 or 4 hour wait between multiple 45% water changes on the same day.

Temperature matched ,conditioned of course.

Do you have nitrites in your tap water?

 

Thanks for the reply. Tested tap because I was curious - zero nitrites.

 

Doing multiple daily water changes shouldn't hurt but I don't think they are needed. I would do one 50% water change daily until the nitrites drop to zero. Do you by any chance have anymore seeded media you can move over to this tank?

The bio-load in your main tank is going to determine how much bacteria there will be on the media you moved over to this tank. If the bio-load in the QT is higher (more fish) than in the main tank, moving seeded media will help but you will still experience at least a mini-cycle. Could that possibly be why you are seeing nitrites in this tank?

 

Having done a water change a 3 am when a fish was on the floor with ammonia in a small newly set up tank . I would suggest having nitrites in a tank IS a reason to be concerned and the five minutes it takes to do a water change is worth the effort Chris1212

I was under the impression that nitrites were just as deadly as ammonia?

 

Thanks, mattgirl always has great advice. Different kind of fish but 5 in each the 20g main and smaller qt. In my main filter, I have a bag of matrix and two aquaclear sponges (and the biowheel). I could transfer one sponge I suppose but then I might lose too much bb out of the display??

 

Having done a water change a 3 am when a fish was on the floor with ammonia in a small newly set up tank . I would suggest having nitrites in a tank IS a reason to be concerned and the five minutes it takes to do a water change is worth the effort Chris1212

I was under the impression that nitrites were just as deadly as ammonia?

I can only go by my own experience. I was out of the hobby for a few years. When I set my tank back up I was starting from a dry tank. As always I did a fish in cycle. When my nitrites spiked they spike higher than the test was able to determine. In other words, off the chart.

During that time I was changing out 50% of the water once a day. It took 5 straight days of water changes to drop them to zero. They didn't go down gradually so my fish were living in water with an off the chart reading for nitrites for 5 days. Most of those fish are still with me here 5 years later. This tells me nitrites aren't as deadly as we have been lead to believe.

Thanks, mattgirl always has great advice. Different kind of fish but 5 in each the 20g main and smaller qt. In my main filter, I have a bag of matrix and two aquaclear sponges (and the biowheel). I could transfer one sponge I suppose but then I might lose too much bb out of the display??

Thank you Chris. I really try If you have a well established cycle in the display tank you should not cause a problem in there by moving one of the sponges over to this tank. Fortunately bacteria grows on every surface in our tank and can replace removed bacteria quickly so removing the sponge shouldn't even cause a glitch in a strong cycle.

 

Thanks for sharing mattgirl. It’s always good to hear of someone’s personal experience. In this case with nitrites.