the 210

[76dragon]

210

Sounds like a plan to me

[Zulaab]

I said nitrItes at 50ppm I ment 5ppm. added ammonia last night, to get it up to 3ppm. ammonia was down to .5ppm this morning. so I added another 12ml to get it up to 4ppm. I think I will wait a couple of days on the fish and see if I can get nitrAtes up to 100ppm. then do the water change and add a few fish.

John --- STOP WITH THE AMMONIA -- if you wanted to spike your tank why didnt you just start by pouring like a quart into the tank and just wait to see the bacteria growing. You have so much bacteria in those filters that they are converting 3ppm to .5 in less than 24 hours.. and your still complaining ?? I know you want to get the Nitrites up and down, but you do understand that as fast as the ammonia bacteria is killing your stuff, Nitrites bacteria is just as fast. So when you can detect barely any ammonia, and you can only get 10-20ppm Nitrites in your tank and you are mad because you cannot get the bacteria level high enough, have you ever thought "wait a second" what is the bacteria is converting this over so quick that I need to do hourly testing to get the 100ppm I am looking for and then by the afternoon I will be at 50 and by evening time when I normally get home it will be at 20, and then I test the water and voila I am ready to spike the tank because I dont see 3ppm ammonia I only see .5 and I dont see 100ppm Nitrites because 24 hours later all I see is 10-20.

STOP ADDING ANYMORE AMMONIA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your like a bird watcher who loves to look at birds but only if there are not a ton of them in the yard -- and to resolve the issue in hopes that no more birds show up you build a 2ft x 20ft box which you fill with bird seeds, and now you cannot understand why you have a TON of birds in your yard and the box is empty, so you return to the box and fill more bird seeds in there... this is what you are doing John.. you have so much ammonia bacteria in the tank that you cannot get a good long term registration on them -- it sounds like to me you want like a week of the ammonia to be at 3ppm and then slowly see a fall... but you are seeing 3ppm being converted to .5 over night.. which just tells me you have so many bacteria colonies that what ever you drop in that tank will have to be feed continuesly to keep up with what the bacteria amounts you have in the tank already.

[Zulaab]

Took a quick few minutes and researched fish less tank cycle. Total time for most tanks which is done with Ammonia, and SEEDED material, less than 7 days total time to get your existing setup up to speed. This time is GREATLY reduced if you are running a wet/dry because a wet/dry puts so much Oxygen in the tank that the bacteria grows exponentially faster... I am pretty sure with the amount of bio filtration that you have going on that tank, that you are cycling your water in less than a day or two...

[Zulaab]

I would remove all your extra bio material and bring it down to just what you want to have in the tank.. and now if you want to see how fast it converts then test it by adding more ammonia.. else your tank is ready for fish... Massive water change as in 90+% and then test the water and you should see 0 everything, then take all your fish from the 300 and dump them in there.. where they will live until you new kitchen table is setup :)

[fshfrk]

Jesper- my nitrAtes are to low. they need to double or triple. then I will do the water change. go to LFS and get some testers and then we will see. if they make it for 24 hrs then I will start adding pond fish. This is all new to me but it's getting close. thanks for your imput.

[Zulaab]

I am wondering if we know someone who has some electronic testers which we could borrow for a week. One for Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates.
I would be interested in seeing if you brought your ammonia up to 3ppm and then test every 2 hours and then note what you see..

[i_am_poor]

Do you still have the corner overflow parts?

[fshfrk]

poor-Geoff has the corner parts. he does not want them so pm him.

tested everything this morning. ammonia is 0ppm. nitrIte is 5.0ppm. nitrAte is 20ppm. So against jespers advice I added 12ml of ammonia to get it back up to 3-4 ppm.I want the nitrAtes to go up and nitrItes to go down to 0ppm.

[Zulaab]

man.. I want to say a ton of stuff now, but in short.. remove 90%+ of the water from the tank, fill back up and catch everything you have from the 300 and put in there.. because without that many fish, your ammonia bacteria is going to die out.

[fshfrk]

My nitrIte bacteria has to catch up. my ammonia bacteria will not die out because I will feed them in the morning. They are very hungry.

[76dragon]

Why so many water changes. Let nature take its course.

[fshfrk]

no water changing yet. tested this morning. ammonia 0ppm. added another 12ml to bring it up to 3-4ppm. nitrIte still at 5.0ppm. nitrAte looks to be going up a little to 20-40ppm. I will bet that in a couple of days the nitrIte will be 0ppm 24 hrs after I feed the ammonia. then I will do a water change and add fish. but if I don't have time that evening I will add more ammonia and do it the next night.

[fshfrk]

NitrAte is up to 40-80ppm. should start to see the nitrIte going down.

[cichlid1409]

you got the parameters were you want em yet ?

[fshfrk]

not yet. so I grabbed 5 sponges out of other tanks wrapped them in panty hose and squeezed them out in the tank. turned it dirty brown. it cleared in 10 minutes. if that don't do it nothing will. last 2 morning eveything is the same. But any day or two nitrItes should start to go down. Becareful with the ammonia I started to get these blisters all over my wrist's and a few on my calfs & ankles . Did not know WTH it was till I relized I was splashing just a few drops on my arms and legs, this stuff is like acid.