hello,

ive been running my tank for 2 weeks so far. I have two fish in there currently. A black moore and a blue oranda. They are tiny compared to the tank. Ive tested the water everyday so far. ive done water changes when the ammonia gets up. Yet currently i just did a 50% water change cause my nitrites were very high. The nitrites are still high after the water change. Its about .5 ppm right now. Im using prime but i dont know if its working. The other parameters are fine. everything is zero and ph is 7.8. Before i put the fish in two weeks ago i also treated the whole tank with permoxyn which kills all the bacteria. I dunno if that could be hindering the beneficial bacteria.

I also had a question about my tank setup. Its a 90 gallon. I have two emperors and a eheim underneath. I have the two extensions on the emperors and i dunno if those are very efficient with the extensions. Im wondering if you guys have any advice on maybe a better way to setup the filters? Here is a pic

Hi LamLam..

When your take is cycled, you should have some nitrAtes. So your tank is not yet cycled. Sometimes this can take longer than a month. Since you have fish in there, I would recommend adding aquarium salt at 1 TEAspoon per gallon, predissolved, to help protect your fish against the nitrItes. Its very toxic to them and can lead to death if left in those conditions.

Someone else should be along to help before long, just wanted to put in what I have learned!

Sounds like your tank is in the second stage of cycling. Do more frequent water changes to get those Nitrite levels down to a safer level. As for the filter's,I use the extension bars on one of my tanks. I don't seem to have any problems using it.It's a deep tank and it seems to help keep the bottom at a cleaner level for me.

Permoxyn is a commercial form of potassium permanganate. PP is one of the very best sterilizing treatments there is. You sterilized the tank nicely if you ran it with PP in the purple range for at least 4 hours.

You can deactivate the PP with hydrogen peroxide - they are rendered "harmless" when mixed. It will remove all the purple color, too.

I am assuming that you sterilzed and then refilled and set the tank to cycle, though. The fact that you have nitrites already is a GREAT sign. You are almost halfway through the cycling. You are doing just fine - changing your water and adding the Prime are the best things for nitrites. Adding a bit of aquarium salt to the concentration of .1% as suggested by GlitterFish is also very helpful.

Time will fix all the water parameters as the tank cycles. I never cease to be amazed at the concentrations of nitrites (and eventually nitrates) in a tank and how water changes work. I have to remind myself nearly every time I do a water change. FOr example, if your nitrites were at 4ppm, and you changed 50% of your water. The nitrites would still be at 2ppm. So you change 50% of the water again. They are now at 1ppm. 50% AGAIN finally brings them to the .5% that you currently have. That would be 135 gallons of water you just lugged and dumped into your tank! WOW! The same goes with nitrates in the future. They can climb to amazing numbers at times (when I am on vacation my nitrates have, on occasion, gone through the roof!). Changing what seems like a massive amount of water helps - it helps a lot - but you have to realize how much and how it helps. Nitrates at 180ppm - 1change goes to 90ppm - 2 changes 45ppm - 3 changes approx. 23pm - 4 changes approx 12ppm. So I would have to do four 50% water changes in a row to lower my nitrates to a reasonable level!

Prime can only do so much - but it is doing it. It does not remove the nitrite, but binds it such that the beneficial bacteria can process it, yet it is no longer toxic to the fish.

Your tank is beautiful. Wow. I love a big tank.....

Thanks for the help. I guess i just have to keep a watch on the nitrites.

Thanks again for the quick response