[AquaticLife] PH Variation in tank (tropical)
Hi Jasmine,
It would probably be a good idea for you to take one or both of the free online fish keeping tutorials. If you go to my blog, then the “A to Z of Fish Keeping” page, you will see links to the fish keeping tutorials near the top of that page. They will walk you through all aspects of fish keeping, including the much needed “nitrogen cycle”. Also read my article on “Filter Maintenance and Cleaning” since this is a very important thing to understand during the beginning stages of your tank. The good bacteria mostly live in your filter system so you don’t want to kill them off by improperly cleaning your filters and you don’t want to throw your filters away which would be throwing away the good bacteria.
In short, the nitrogen cycle is where you “grow” the good Nitrifying bacteria, primarily in your filter system. Fish put out lots of ammonia via urine, osmoregulation and gill function. Ammonia is toxic to fish at very low levels. God or Mother Nature has provided a bacteria that eats ammonia and converts the ammonia to nitrite. Nitrite is also toxic to fish at very low levels… but God or Mother Nature has also provided another bacteria that eats nitrite and converts it to nitrate. Nitrate is relatively harmless unless it gets to very high levels. This is the nitrogen cycle… ammonia>nitrite>nitrate. We control the nitrate levels with live plants and doing weekly 25% PWC’s (partial water changes).
These good N-bacteria exist everywhere and will eventually “naturally” form in your tank but it would have been much better to “Fishless Cycle” your tank. This is where you start with a running tank except no fish and you would add 4.0ppm to 5.0ppm of plain ammonia to the tank and wait while the nitrogen cycle is established. You would test the tank for ammonia/nitrite every couple of days and add more ammonia to keep it in the 4-5ppm range until the tank is cycling the ammonia to 0.0ppm within 24 hours. Then you would keep adding 4-5ppm of ammonia until the nitrites are also being cycled to 0.0ppm within 24 hours. At that point, you would do a 90% PWC and then you can add all of your fish to fully stock the tank (not overstock it) and you wouldn’t have any problems with ammonia or nitrite harming your fish since you grew your own nitrifying bacteria colonies.
Since you already have fish, you are now stuck with “Cycling With Fish” which is also covered in a long article that I have linked on the A to Z page.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com (Links to articles referenced above listed on the right side under Archives - Year, Month and under Labels)
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
