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Re: Nitrogen Cycle
Yes, nitrite really drops once it starts going down, so looks like you are all done with "establishing the nitrogen cycle" (as it is properly called!)
As for the pH, you are at the end of the range of one test and just barely into the range of the other, don't worry about it -- unless it falls even more. If it hits the 6's you need to know. I doubt it will change much though, from here.
Of more interest at this point is actually your KH, not sure if the typical test kits still has that. If you have used rain water, it will be very low, well water would be very high, surface water is unknown but I think it is not so high in KH. You want to keep that KH rather stable, don't monkey around with it, keep your water source the same as much as possible (hence the difficulty of relying on rainwater for low KH, therefore low pH)
Why this is important is that KH really controls your pH, and many suspect that when fish are reported to prefer one pH or another, what that really means is that they prefer one KH or another, or even one level of conductivity or another -- all related to the solids in the water; salts or minerals.
For the most part, if it is hard to get a lather when using soap, you have hard water, if it is easy to lather but hard to rinse off the slimey feel, you have soft water. If you have a water softener you have easier soap lather but still high minerals so it fools you but not your fish.
So, my caution about the pH falling is due to IF you were using very soft water, with low KH, then the normal processes in the tank (decay of plants, fish wastes of urine and CO2) create acids in the tank, lowering the KH even more, leading to lower pH. It is possible to get to a breaking point, where the KH hits nearly zero, the pH plunges to 5 or something very low, and the nitrogen processing bacteria die totally. (for the sake of argument, there are probbably some other bacteria that would start up at that low pH but the ones you had are dead, and your fish are terribly unhappy now in this bath of acid). This rarely happens, particularly in Houston, but it could so you need to know, as it could if you had a lot of RO water or rainwater with no minerals in it.
Yes, nitrite really drops once it starts going down, so looks like you are all done with "establishing the nitrogen cycle" (as it is properly called!)
As for the pH, you are at the end of the range of one test and just barely into the range of the other, don't worry about it -- unless it falls even more. If it hits the 6's you need to know. I doubt it will change much though, from here.
Of more interest at this point is actually your KH, not sure if the typical test kits still has that. If you have used rain water, it will be very low, well water would be very high, surface water is unknown but I think it is not so high in KH. You want to keep that KH rather stable, don't monkey around with it, keep your water source the same as much as possible (hence the difficulty of relying on rainwater for low KH, therefore low pH)
Why this is important is that KH really controls your pH, and many suspect that when fish are reported to prefer one pH or another, what that really means is that they prefer one KH or another, or even one level of conductivity or another -- all related to the solids in the water; salts or minerals.
For the most part, if it is hard to get a lather when using soap, you have hard water, if it is easy to lather but hard to rinse off the slimey feel, you have soft water. If you have a water softener you have easier soap lather but still high minerals so it fools you but not your fish.
So, my caution about the pH falling is due to IF you were using very soft water, with low KH, then the normal processes in the tank (decay of plants, fish wastes of urine and CO2) create acids in the tank, lowering the KH even more, leading to lower pH. It is possible to get to a breaking point, where the KH hits nearly zero, the pH plunges to 5 or something very low, and the nitrogen processing bacteria die totally. (for the sake of argument, there are probbably some other bacteria that would start up at that low pH but the ones you had are dead, and your fish are terribly unhappy now in this bath of acid). This rarely happens, particularly in Houston, but it could so you need to know, as it could if you had a lot of RO water or rainwater with no minerals in it.
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