Quote:
Originally Posted by
TVukan http:///t/394884/help-high-nitrites#post_3514912
My ammonia is .25 on the border line to 0 and my nitrates are at 0. I just did a 25 gallon water change. Should I slow down my feeding will this lower the nitrites? What else can I do to get them down? It's weird because all my levels were great until I bought some rock off Craigslist and now my tank has green algae everywhere. Could this have caused my nitrites to spike?? I'm stumped. I have 3 puffers a huge yellow clown a bamboo shark a pacaso trigger and a Zebra eel in my tank and I'm very worried about them. The only reason I have all these fish is because we got a steal deal on Craigslist and our LFS told us to add Smart Start and our tank would cycle and we could add fish immediately. But we waited 3 weeks to add the fish.
Hello,
You were completely lied to. You can never add anything like Smart Start and think the tank is cycled and ready for fish immediately. Constant water changes is all you can do. Even in a well cycled tank, you can't add that many fish at one time. The cheap comes out expensive.
If your fish make it through the night, and I really doubt they will unless you do a bunch of water changes to keep them alive. Give the fish to a fish store until you can cycle your tank. Ammonia and nitrites are deadly to sea life. Your tank is in the middle of a cycle, Too much was added too soon. Live rock is loaded with tiny sea critters, some of those tiny critters die in transport...add that to so many fish in an uncycled tank, and it means disaster.
The way it is supposed to be done:
Time is not the indicator that a tank is cycled. You have to be patient and do the water tests...First you get an ammonia spike, then ...WAIT...you will start seeing the ammonia drop, and get a nitrite spike, then when both drop to zero...you have nitrates. That is a complete cycle. Everything is balanced at that point, you have enough good bacteria to feed on the ammonia and nitrites that were in the tank. At that point, you can only add ONE fish, and wait a week or two allowing the tank to re-balance itself out, before you add another fish. Fish poop, and that makes ammonia... and then the good bacteria has to build up and remove the ammonia and nitrites produced by the new fish....once it does, the tank is again balanced. Then you can add another fish.
Sorry to be the one to give you bad news. As you can see from the explanation above, the nitrite spike was inevitable, feeding them less is not going to help...no way was there enough good bacteria built up in your tank, to be able handle that many fish, and uncured live rock.
