I've got a 10 gallon tank with two small orandas in it thats in the middle of cycling, currently in the nitrite period. I know that nitrites can easily get toxic, and I've been watching the levels like 2-3 times a day, but I am wondering how much water I should be changing in order to keep them under control. Right now its been kind of hard to keep them under 2.0 with 20% changes, can I do more each day? Will that mess up the cycle? They had gotten very high while I was out of town for spring break so I'm sort of playing catch up with it now.

I have salt in there right now (~1tsp/gallon) because I read here that would help them deal with the nitrites. Is that enough or do I need to add more?

And finally, right now the tank has one of the crappy whisper filters that came with it, does anyone have much experience with these? Would we be better off buying a different filter (next month when I have money again), or is this one going to be ok until we can upgrade the tank to a 20g in august?

Well your doing good so far, but being at the fact that you have a 10 gal tank this is going to be harder. Since trying to control the levels with so little water.

I would do a 30% water change and see if that will lower it, just be careful and check it out just like your doing. You might also want to see if you can get Bio Spare this will help cycle the tank faster for you D:

I did get some BioSpira while I was home over the break (I can't seem to find it anywhere in Orlando, but they had it at the Petland back home), but by the time I got back with it the nitrites were already very high and I'm afraid it hasn't helped much. I think it may have been kept too hot for too long, the fridge at the store where I found it did not seem to be working very well.

There are some nitrates being produced now though, so that's giving me hope that I will be over this hump soon. For some reason this tank has cycled *very* slowly, despite being fairly warm. It took almost 4 weeks to get nitrites, the ammonia was spiking for forever.

I can't wait till August, roomate and I will be saving up for bigger tanks over the summer. A 20-30 gallon for the goldies and maybe a larger (46-55ish) tropical tank, fish are addictive!