Clowning_Around
New member
So after returning to the hobby middle of this year I thought I was fairly squared away until one of life's curve balls.
Basically, here's the run down for context to get to the question.
I had my 75g that I built, cycling via half a dozen raw shrimp in the sump for 4 days, ammonia had spiked. Mean while I also had a pair of clowns in a 20g QT tank using a sponge filter. All was running its course when I did something stupid with my DT, ill forgot the details but resultrd in a small hairline crack in the overflow glass box. While in the midst of draining the DT to take down for repair I had a medical emergency. After a trip to the ER, I was released but with directions of a 10lb weight restriction and surgery asap. So with some assistance from the wife, I left the DT empty in place and used a piece of 3/4 flexible tubing to make my sumps return feed the intake, to keep my cycle running. This has worked well with a small weekly top off. However, during my recovery things went south on maintenance of the QT - overfeeding, etc ended up losing the clowns after a month
. QT was then emptied.
Fast forward 3 months to now and in ready and eager to get things rolling about again. I had a spare sponge in my sump along with many plastic scrubbies to seed, these where added back when it was cycling and the tubing looped.
So last week I did a 100% new water fill as well as one stollen sponge & 10 plastic scrubbies - all presumably seeded at this point. Went to the lfs 1 day later and grabbed a new set of clowns. Turns out they had a deformity. So today I exchanged them today for two angels that where doing well together in the same tank and a dart fish. I acclimating them as usual. Today is also my weekly water test day (API). today's readings: Ph 8.0, ammonia says .5ppm but dial on the glass inside says 0, nitrite 5ppm ( off the chart), nitrate 20ppm.
So at this juncture im not sure what to do. Meaning a 50% water change to get it out of the system and reading or do I need to do more like 75 or 100? It looks like the system is cycling or trying to process it but just cant keep up with the load from the two clowns I had after just one week. I suspect theae fish I picked up today will have slightly more load yet. I have added seachem prime to detox it. Using my DT is still out of the question, so whatever I do it is limited tho the 20g.
Please help, I dont want to have buyers regret....
On a side note Im working on the DT today since Friday was my first day off of weight restriction
. I suspect I will have it back up in 2 weeks.
Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
Basically, here's the run down for context to get to the question.
I had my 75g that I built, cycling via half a dozen raw shrimp in the sump for 4 days, ammonia had spiked. Mean while I also had a pair of clowns in a 20g QT tank using a sponge filter. All was running its course when I did something stupid with my DT, ill forgot the details but resultrd in a small hairline crack in the overflow glass box. While in the midst of draining the DT to take down for repair I had a medical emergency. After a trip to the ER, I was released but with directions of a 10lb weight restriction and surgery asap. So with some assistance from the wife, I left the DT empty in place and used a piece of 3/4 flexible tubing to make my sumps return feed the intake, to keep my cycle running. This has worked well with a small weekly top off. However, during my recovery things went south on maintenance of the QT - overfeeding, etc ended up losing the clowns after a month
. QT was then emptied. Fast forward 3 months to now and in ready and eager to get things rolling about again. I had a spare sponge in my sump along with many plastic scrubbies to seed, these where added back when it was cycling and the tubing looped.
So last week I did a 100% new water fill as well as one stollen sponge & 10 plastic scrubbies - all presumably seeded at this point. Went to the lfs 1 day later and grabbed a new set of clowns. Turns out they had a deformity. So today I exchanged them today for two angels that where doing well together in the same tank and a dart fish. I acclimating them as usual. Today is also my weekly water test day (API). today's readings: Ph 8.0, ammonia says .5ppm but dial on the glass inside says 0, nitrite 5ppm ( off the chart), nitrate 20ppm.
So at this juncture im not sure what to do. Meaning a 50% water change to get it out of the system and reading or do I need to do more like 75 or 100? It looks like the system is cycling or trying to process it but just cant keep up with the load from the two clowns I had after just one week. I suspect theae fish I picked up today will have slightly more load yet. I have added seachem prime to detox it. Using my DT is still out of the question, so whatever I do it is limited tho the 20g.
Please help, I dont want to have buyers regret....
On a side note Im working on the DT today since Friday was my first day off of weight restriction
. I suspect I will have it back up in 2 weeks.Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
