Hi all,
I'm very confused as to what I'm supposed to do with this tank. It's a 55 gallon tank and have been cycling for some time now. I did a 80% water change last night and I'm still getting high nitrates and nitrites.
My ammonia is between 0.25-0.50 and I know that's fine, my pH is 7.6.
I put in API Quick Start each time I did a water change and it doesn't seem to have fixed it. I also put in fish food to help and that doesn't seem to have worked either.
What should I do? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Posted by BootyNoNeck
24 Comments
Wait.
It can take multiple weeks to cycle, even months. Don’t do water changes right now, as that only removes the ammonia/nitrite that the respective bacteria colonies need to feed on and grow. Let the ecosystem do its thing
Simple. WAIT.
By doing big water changes you are setting your cycle back every time. Stop adding food so often, let the tank build its bacteria colonies. Cycles can take weeks and even months dependent on the colony that’s growing. Stop dosing quick start adding to much causes a build up of bacteria that can’t settle causing the opposite of helping.
Be patient.
Make sure you dechlorinate the water. And wait! Don’t add more food the levels are so high you are possibly locking the bacteria colonies from efficiently processing nitrites or ammonia.
Nothing wait it out. That’s the best thing you can do.
Do water changes until the nitrates are 1.0 or lower
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Test your tap water. Mine has nitrates right out of the tap.
You just have WAY TO MUCH nitrates in your tank. So much so that your cycle doesn’t know what to do with it all. Do another massive water change to get the levels down. Whatever you are adding to add nitrogen, you need to add a lot less.
Keep waiting, mine were the same but after about 1 and a half months everything settled. Fast forward 4 months every thing is still nice
Like others have mentioned, part of this is a waiting game. I started a tank back in October with some active media from my local fish shop. Even with that it took about 6 weeks to get it to cycle properly where I was getting ammonia/nitrites down to 0 ppm in 24 hours on a 2ppm ammonia dose. Nitrates were still high for about a week after even with water changes and plants.
Since it’s cycled, it’s been holding nicely with 10 hasbrosus cories at 0 ppm ammonia/nitrites and about 10-20ppm nitrates, depending on if I dose some ferts for the plants.
Water changes help to an extent, plants will help as well, especially floaters. Be patient, you’ll get there.
My first tank took 5-6 weeks
Two weeks is not enough
whats your filtration set up. what size tank. how many fish, how much do you feed them
half the comments in here: dont do water changes
other half : do more changes
Wait for the Nitrite to start dropping
Put plants in the tank and use the free fertilizer
If you have a reliable local fish store with good practices, you can purchase a seasoned sponge filter from them to instantly cycle your aquarium. Just have to make sure that they are a good store that you trust
Aquarian kick start and aquarium cleaner from Walmart. Fixed my problems real fast.
What’s your ph at?
Just wait, sometimes it takes longer. Do you have soft water or low ph? I was watching a GlassBoxDiaries video the other day and he was explaining that people with (one of those) situations, it could take a month or more. He went into how microbes react in that environment and that the bottled stuff doesnt work if yoir water is that way, that kind of bacteria will just die in that water. I dont have a link or anything, but if you do have soft or low ph water you could look it up. Its an informative channel either way.
Never do more than a 50% water change unless it is an emergency, do you have any plants in your tank?
Why did you do a water change? Just curious
I’m going to go against the grain and say do a 50% water change. You’ll still have plenty of nitrites to feed the bacteria, you’re not doing a 100% change. Even if you did a 100% water change, you can just add a little more ammonia to the new water, no biggie. The nitrifying bacteria do not live in the water column.
Too many nitrites (and to an extent, too many nitrates) can stall the cycle. I had this happen on a previous tank where I added too much ammonia. Everything progressed great for a week and then just stopped when I got to 2ppm nitrites. Over a week of no progress, and I finally did a water change. Cycle progressed immediately after that and was completely done in another 2 days.
I saw a comment where you said you did a huge water change last night. If this is what it looks like after that, you definitely had the cycle stall. I would still do another water change and aim for no more than 1ppm or so.
Most people don’t realize beneficial bacteria grows on surfaces and is very limited in the water column. Meaning you can effectively do water changes to lower nitrates and still cycle the tank. Now if you have no fish in there you can leave it but nitrates will be through the roof and take quite a bit of water changes to get it low again. Just keep feeding the cycle(ammonia.
Have you tested your water from the source, assuming it’s out of the tap? You could be filling it with nitrates to start
2 weeks is not long enough, those need to all be lighter colors to not hurt the fish, you have to be patient and let the science work!!!