did my first water test today

[watson0720]

well the tank has been set up for a grand total of 3 days now, with 7 goldfish in it.  here are the readings

nitrate= 20ppm
nitrite= 5.0ppm
gh= 300ppm
kh= 180ppm
ph= 7.4 to 7.6

anybody tell me if thats good/bad????

remember i'm new

[JLawson]

Re: did my first water test today

Did you test the ammonia level?  How are your fish acting?

[watson0720]

Re: did my first water test today

i have 7 goldfish in there right now with 10 ghost shrimp and everything is great that i can tell.  the shrimp are hanging out on the heater though

[Ellen]

Re: did my first water test today

It would be easier to tell where you are in cycling your tank if you knew the Ammonia level also.

You may already know this, but...
The first step in cycling your tank will be ammonia, it should spike and then fall.
Then your nitrites will start showing up, they will also spike and then fall.
Finally you will start to get nitrates.

After your tank is fully cycled, you should *never* get ammonia or nitrite readings again; if you do then 1) your tank wasn't fully cycled or 2) something has happened to your bacteria bed and you are going to have some sort of a re-cycle.

Your cycled tank will always produce nitrate. If you have plants, they will tend to keep your nitrates down. This is part of the reason you do water changes -- to keep your nitrates down. Nitrate levels have to be pretty high to poison most fish, so if you do your regular water changes, they probably won't be a problem.

So you're good to start adding fish once your ammonia and nitrite are 0 for a few days.

Also, shrimp are more sensitive to ammonia than fish are, so its not usually a good idea to cycle a tank with them, because they usually don't make it. I get that these little guys aren't expensive or anything, but the fact that they don't really add that much ammonia (for the tank to cycle) on top of their sensitivity kinda makes them useless in trying to cycle the tank.

HTH,
Ellen