High Nitrite - No Ammonia or Nitrate
Introduced a new catfish and lost total population (16 fish) within 10 days. Cleaned all thoroughly but have lost all new fish on three separate occasions (usually 5/6 fish). It has been 7 weeks since the last startup...have 6 fish and want to
Introduced a new catfish and lost total population (16 fish) within 10 days. Cleaned all thoroughly but have lost all new fish on three separate occasions (usually 5/6 fish). It has been 7 weeks since the last startup...have 6 fish and want to
The sudden loss of fish in an established tank that fast suggests some form of disease, but in the long run, it would have been better to leave the gravel rinsed in safe dechlorinated water and replaced it rather than kill the entire bacterial population with a thorough cleaning. In essence, you restarted with a new, unmature tank, and require some time to allow the bacterial populations that perform essential beneficial ammonia and nitrite removal to re-establish. Cycle will help tremendously in ensuring the correct bacteria become the dominant strains, but depending on feeding and waste production in the aquarium, this can take some time. Regular use of Cycle will continue to establish and maintain the population. But you might want to look at some other factors as well. Primarily, take a critical look at your feeding pattern. A feeding should be no more than the fish can eat in two minutes with nothing hitting the bottom. If there are flakes left over after two minutes, you have overfed, and this will decay, providing ammonia as the main by-product. I suggest feeding once a day in this manner, probably that will reduce the amount of waste and the nitrogen compound production. As far as adding new fish, it is expected that the bacterial population of the nitrite removing bacteria (in Cycle's case - nitrobacter ), will reach proper density shortly - the bacteria double about every 8 hours, so it will reach the proper concentration soon I would hope. I would never ad to the stress new fish encounter by making them suddenly adjust to lethal concentrations of nitrite as well as all the other variables they encounter in a new tank. Adjusting to a new set of tank mates, pH and other water characteristics. Adding a concentration of nitrite (or ammonia) that the others are already adjusted to, since they were there as it built up, will often stress a new fish beyond its limits. Thank you for quick response but I'm not sure that my question was answered......How does one lower Nitrite quickly when level appears to be reaching toxic stage and just as importantly does it make sense that Nitrite can be as high as 5 with virtually no Ammonia nor Nitrate? Again many thanks, I appreciate your feedback The best and safest way to lower nitrite is to do a water change. You should test your tap water to ensure that the nitrite you remove is more than any nitrite carried in the replacement water, thus dilution works. A second way not to necessarily reduce but make the nitrite less toxic is to use a standard dose of aquarium salt (assuming you have not added to it previously). In the course of doing a new series of test kits, extensive documentation was identified that clearly suggests aquarium salt helps to detoxify the effects of nitrite somewhat. So that is your other course of action. Always remember that you can replace salt in the same amount as you remove during a water change, but that evaporation replacement should be fresh only, no salt, otherwise the concentration will rise. For the other part of your answer, I have to go into the biology of the system a bit. I don't plan to be complex, but it may take a few words. Ammonia builds up in a tank, over the first ten days or so of a sterile new aquarium a population of bacteria occurs that are lithotrophic and use ammonia essentially as a food source. Without getting into the other requirements, it takes about ten days for those bugs to replicate geometrically (double every replication period) to reach a concentration high enough to eliminate any ammonia as soon as it is produced. I mean that once the proper bacterial population of nitrosomonas is reached, every molecule of ammonia is essentially reduced to nitrite as soon as it occurs, there is no noticeable ammonia found on a test kit because it simply has no time to react to the chemicals, it has gone almost directly to nitrite. That explains the first conundrum you have - why is there no ammonia shown. The second problem is for the other lithotroph needed in this cycle - nitrobacter - to establish and thrive. Nitrobacter is not a particularly strong bacteria, and it is heavily predated by other strains in the aquarium. So it already has a hard time right off the bat, but this isn't the reason for the increase in nitrite in your case, the real problem is another little glitch thrown in by Mother Nature. You see, nitrobacter is inhibited by ammonia, so during the time when the ammonia concentrations rose, nitrobacter was inert and non functional, it was not growing and replication and removing nitrite. For the first ten days a high production of ammonia is normally noted, the bacteria are creating nitrite as fast as they can, but until the population catches up with the production, ammonia is seen to increase and then suddenly drop to 0. All during this time the nitrobacter are inert, so nitrite is building but not being removed, so it will concentrate and show up on a test. After the ammonia is eliminated as soon as it is produced, nitrite is still being created on an ongoing basis, but nitrobacter now can begin to activate. Remember, you have the original nitrite, plus an ongoing production from the fish and other life processes being created on an ongoing basis. It takes at least 21 days for the population explosion of nitrobacter to finally reach the density where it can catch up with nitrite production and again reach the level where all nitrite produced by the ammonia reduction is automatically and instantly transformed to nitrate by the active lithotrophs. So it is quite possible to see high concentrations of nitrite when there is no testable ammonia available. That simple means the ammonia production in the aquarium is reduced as fast as it is created, with no lag time. Nitrate is the final by-product, so it also can show no presence in this case. While ammonia is in the tank, nitrobacter is inhibited, so it cannot produce nitrate as its byproduct. It also takes time for a proper population to develop where it can produce testable amounts of nitrate as a result of its work. So there is a logical window where nitrite is not being eliminated fast enough so it concentrates, but it is not being reduced to produce a noticeable concentration of nitrate.
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