Water Quality

[Deborah Susan Berry]

My water tests are worrying me...

Ph is consistantly at 7.6,

Ammonia 0.25

Nitrites 6.0

Nitrates 5.0

Temperature 74 degrees

The system is about six weeks old, I used feeder gold fish in my cycling, Fish have begun dying off and I just added more. I'm still trying to find catfish fingerlings.

Can I just go collect some fish from the local lakes? I live in Virginia Beach VA.

I have a 40 gallon aquarium  and a fifty five gallon barrel with fish in both, two seperate systems.

they are in a 6X7 ft green house. Very small but efficient. The grow beds are filled with lava rock. I'm having a problem finding 3/4" gravel that doesn't have lime in it.

Can I use pea gravel???

And the third question...why are the nitrites so high? I'm only feeding them twice a day and I remove what they don't eat. Can someone please advise me???

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Nitrites are way to high to add fish... DON'T DO IT! Your system isn't cycled yet, so don't feed your fish either...they can do without food for long periods. Wait for the Nitrites to return to 0. Even then your bacteria is not yet fully established so feed sparingly and monitor the Nitrites... if they go above 1 again stop feeding.

[TCLynx]

Yep as Jonathan says, STOP feeding.  Do a partial water change.  Pump and filter your water as much as possible perhaps add aeration and if you want to maybe save some of the fish, perhaps salt the system to 1 ppt

Here is a blog post with info about salting

nitrite is to fish kinda like carbon monoxide is to air breathers.  Salt can help against that a little bit for a little while but if your nitrite has been way high for a while then it is hard to know if your fish will make it.

You are in the nitrite spike phase of cycling up, this is sometimes the hardest part but when the nitrite does fall, it will probably do it rapidly.  Then you start feeding again but as Jonathan says, do it sparingly and keep testing daily so that as you start to increase feeding you will know if ammonia or nitrite rise again you need skip feeding that day.

Pea gravel, get a hand full of it and test it with vinegar to see if it is limestone too.  If most of the other gravel is limestone then the pea gravel probably will be too.  (pea gravel only describes the size/shape, not the type of stone.)  You might see if anyone in your area carries Stalite or growstones.

As to catfish fingerlings, with only a 40 gallon aquarium and a 55 gallon barrel.  UH what kind of catfish?  I will personally tell you that channel catfish are not the appropriate fish for those size tanks  A 55 gallon barrel is only 24 inches wide.

Channel catfish easily grow to be 24 inches long.  They don't even do well in 100 gallon stock tanks and I don't even like to recommend them for stocking in IBC fish tanks.

[Kenyon James Hopkins]

How long does the nitrite spike usually last for? I'm at 3 weeks with it usually at 6 or 7 with daily water exchanges. Ammonia at or near 0, Nitrates in the 100-150 range with a water temp between 75 and 84 degrees. PH hovering around 7-7.4.  

[TCLynx]

Sigh, the problem with cycling with fish is you wind up doing water changes in hope to keep the fish alive, but this often messes with the water chemistry enough to actually prolong the process.

So are you at three weeks total in cycling or is it three weeks since the nitrite started to spike?  Cycling normally takes six weeks, sometimes a little less and often even more depending on conditions.  8 weeks to cycle with fish is not uncommon.  If you are at the 3 week mark since you started, be patient.  Salt can help mitigate nitrite for the fish, here is a blog post about it.

Salt for fish health

[Kenyon James Hopkins]

5 weeks since cycling began. I think my problem might be the nitrite test. Due to a critical accident tonight, I just had to replace 500 gallons of my 700 gallon system due to a hose disconnecting from my pump :(. So I tested after filling it back up and it reads the same 6ppm. That has to be impossible. The tap water doesn't have any, I checked.

[TCLynx]

Double check the test kit to make sure it is the proper reagent for freshwater.  Make sure you follow the directions (pretty easy with nitrite but have had some people go pretty crazy because they had never read the directions for doing water testing)

Try testing a sample of tap water that has never seen your system or even the sample cup you normally use.

Take a sample of your system water to a pet store or aquarium shop that will normally run water tests for free.

It is possible that re-agents go bad or are faulty and you should be able to buy a nitrite only test kit at the aquarium shop to replace your bottle.

[Kenyon James Hopkins]

I have the API Freshwater Master Kit. Directions read twice when I first started and again last night (5 drops, shake)

After I had the results from the nitrite test post oopsie, I did test the tap water from my sink and it read 0ppm. no sample cup, just the glass test tubes that came with the test kit.

 

I will take a sample of my water to the pet store. Great idea!