water changes while going through cycle?

[philgmiami]

my tank has been set up for almost 2 months. the only thing that is stable is my ph. everything else is sky high.. esp ammonia,why?i just have a few demzals..i did use tap water,but used chemicals to remove the bad stuff in it.. should i leave it alone, or do a 10 20 % water change every week with RO WATER, FROM LPS TILL MT LEVELS ARE BETTER?.. I HAVE LIKE 60 POUNDS OF DEAD ROCK AND 40 LIVE.... HELPPPPPPPPPPPPP WHAT SHOULD I DO,THE WAIT ON FISH IS KILL'N ME :happyfish

 

[dskidmore]

A) How much/what kind of sand do you have?
B) What size is your tank, and how many damsels?
If you want the damsels to live, you need to either keep up the water changes or take them back to the store. Doing water changes will prolong your cycle, but if you have fish living in there already, you have to keep the ammonia down to survivable levels.
Be warned, some people are going to flame you over starting your cycle with damsels. I'll just assume you either didn't know any better or made the choice to do so for your own reasons. My first couple freshwater tanks were cycled with fish, but I won't be doing it again now that I know how to cycle without fish.
I'd be suspicious of the tap water, even when treated. Take your test kit and check some of that water before putting it into your tank. Did you know that some cities actually add ammonia to the water? It makes the chlorine more stable. If you're ever going to keep corals or delicate invertabrates, you'll want to switch to water that has been purified by Reverse Osmosis, either by getting an RO/DI filter yourself or by buying the bottled water at 33 to 58 cents a gallon.

 

[kaotik]

First of all, does "a few" mean three? I wouldnt suggest cycling with live fish, but three is too many anyways. Most likely, its the damsels keeping the ammonia up and your biofilter cant develop fast enough to keep up and convert to nitrite/ate. Did you start with live sand?? If not, you might want to add a small bag to get some bacteria in your tank. Or if you know anyone (not a pet shop) that has a tank you might use some water from their tank to add to yours. Also, when you do water changes, i suggest using RO water. How much are you feeding? You could be overfeeding your damsels too.

 

[philgmiami]

i have a 55 with 60 ponds of LS and my be 20 pounds of LR.. WITH 4 DEMZALS.should i use the ro water at the LPS. and do 10-20% water changes every week till my ammonia goes down? or just let it be?, someone said to leave alone, its normal for eveything to be high going through a cycle, is that true?

 

[philgmiami]

TEMP 76-77
AMMONIA 2.5
PH BETWEEN 7.7 &8.0
NITRITE 0.8
SAL 1.025
THE TANKS BEEN SET UP FOR 2 MONTHS.. I ALSO HAVE A WET -DRY SYSTEM.. READ MY OTHER THREAD AT TOP OF THIS Page, and pleaseeeeeeeeee tell me what i should do next

thank you

 

[dskidmore]

10% water changes every week is part of normal maintenance. To tackle a toxic ammonia level, you want to make those changes daily.
If you really want to cycle with a fish, I'd say take three back to the store and start with only the one. You have plenty of ammonia in the tank already, you don't need lots of fish to produce more.
If you want to finish your cycle without fish, return all four, and stop doing water changes. Continue to add a small amount of fish food every day to simulate the bioload of fish that will be in the tank later.
Ammonia of 2.5 is really toxic to fish, when cycling with fish, you need to do enough water changes to keep the ammonia under 0.5. When cycling without fish, your target starting ammonia is around 2.0, then it should decrease from there.
If your ammonia level gets too high (I don't have a number on me) it can actually kill the bacteria that are supposed to eat it. You may have gone through such a high spike, and are still recovering. Do you have a log of the ammonia and nitrite levels during your cycle? I'd be curious what the highest readings you had were, and how much they have come down.

 

[philgmiami]

i dont have a log of my past cycle numbers.. i have a 55g, should i take out, 5? 10? 15? gallons a day? or should i just change all my water and start all over? .......thank you

 

[dskidmore]

You might want to start with 25% (10-15 gallons) water changes to get that ammonia below toxic levels. After that let your ammonia and nitrite readings be your guide on how how much you need to change out. There might be some literature in the test kit that gives you an idea of acceptable levels. The end goal, at the end of your cycle is to be doing 5 gallon water changes weekly, and have your ammonia and nitrite at 0 even before the water change occurs.
I still recomend taking most of the fish back to the store for credit until your cycle is over. Then you can forget about the water changes and just let the cycle complete.
Was your live rock cured or uncured? Uncured live rock usually creates enough ammonia to start the cycle without fish, so if you started out with uncured rock and added fish, you doubled up your ammonia sources.

 

[philgmiami]

cured?, uncured?..what do you mean??? when i started my cycle i just had LS AND 3 DAMZELS.. IVE JUST ADDED ABOUT 30 POUNDS OF LR 2 DAYS AGO WITH NEW LIGHTING..4 X 65 WITH A MOONBEAM. I TOOK ONE OF MY BIG DEAD ROCKS OUT JUST NOW AND FOUND A DEAD STARFISH.. I TOSSED IT IN THE GARBAGE.. BOYYYYYYY DID IT STINK!!!!.. THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ONE OF MY PROBLEMS?
I ALSO DID A 15G WATER CHANGE WITH RO THIS MORNING, I CHECKED MY WATER AND THE READINGS ARE THE SAME AS BE4 :notsure:
MY LIVE ROCK HAS ALL KINDS OF STUFF ON IT,,IM NOT SURE OF ALL THE NAMES, BUT.. I KNOW I HAVE A FEATHER DUSTER THAT POPS OUT, WOOOOW THEY ARE COOL!!!.. AND A VERY SMALL ANAMONE(THE SIZE OF A DIME

 

[dskidmore]

Originally Posted by philgmiami
cured?, uncured?..what do you mean??? when i started my cycle i just had LS AND 3 DAMZELS.. IVE JUST ADDED ABOUT 30 POUNDS OF LR 2 DAYS AGO WITH NEW LIGHTING..4 X 65 WITH A MOONBEAM. I TOOK ONE OF MY BIG DEAD ROCKS OUT JUST NOW AND FOUND A DEAD STARFISH.. I TOSSED IT IN THE GARBAGE.. BOYYYYYYY DID IT STINK!!!!.. THINK THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ONE OF MY PROBLEMS?
Sounds like you have uncured. To cure it, it would have been put into a seperate tank (many people use new buckets or rubbermaid trash bins for this) until the ammonia readings there are 0. Many of the things on the rock will die during this process, as they are not suitable organisims for captivity, or were injured in transit. Sometimes your fish store or online supplier will do this for you, sometimes they do not. Sometimes even if they sell it precured, it really isn't completely, or needs more curing after suffering die-off in shipping. The number one way to tell if rock is precured, is to take it out of the tank and sniff it. Stinky rock is uncured, slightly fishy rock is precured. There are andvantages and disadvantages to both ways of doing it, but in your case it's the source of your current ammonia problems.
Be patient. Do enough water changes to keep the fish alive if you're not going to return them. The reason your readings are not going down is because you are seeing a constant addition of ammonia to the tank. This will taper off when things stop dying on the live rock. If you just put the live rock in, and it's uncured, I'd say you have another month to wait for it to cure.