DrBoxedWine
New member
Hi everyone,
A brief (relatively) history... I have a 20g quarantine that started cycling about 8 weeks ago. It completed it's cycle about 3 weeks ago. It would routinely take about 2-3 ppm ammonia down to 0 in about 24 hours, and also nitrites would be at 0 after 24 hours. Friday night, i added ammonia just to be sure all the bacteria would be good to go by the next afternoon when i got my first fish, a pair of clowns. Well i was an idiot, and didn't test the water before i went to the store. I added too much ammonia friday night, and it was about 5 ppm when i tested the water (after adding the fish and noticing they were swimming/gasping near the top). I took the fish out, put them in a bucket of clean, recently mixed saltwater made with RODI water, added an air stone and a heater and got to work on about a 95% change on the QT tank to get rid of the ammonia. Ammonia is now no longer an issue but both the bucket the clowns are in, as well as the QT tank has about 0.5-1 ppm nitrites. I added some prime to the bucket where the clowns are. I also tested a new batch of RODI water as a control, and it's reading 0 nitrites with the same test.
What the heck?!?!?!?! Has anyone ever seen this? The only think i can think of is that the QT tank and the bucket have Tropic Eden reef flakes sand that i'm keeping in a plastic tuperware container to keep ph and kh stable. I just took some and put it in the new RODI water i'm making to see if has an effect, but i'm truly at a loss. I definitely messed up by not making sure everything was good before i got the clowns, but now i have them, and I'm trying to get them through this. Does anyone have any advice??
A brief (relatively) history... I have a 20g quarantine that started cycling about 8 weeks ago. It completed it's cycle about 3 weeks ago. It would routinely take about 2-3 ppm ammonia down to 0 in about 24 hours, and also nitrites would be at 0 after 24 hours. Friday night, i added ammonia just to be sure all the bacteria would be good to go by the next afternoon when i got my first fish, a pair of clowns. Well i was an idiot, and didn't test the water before i went to the store. I added too much ammonia friday night, and it was about 5 ppm when i tested the water (after adding the fish and noticing they were swimming/gasping near the top). I took the fish out, put them in a bucket of clean, recently mixed saltwater made with RODI water, added an air stone and a heater and got to work on about a 95% change on the QT tank to get rid of the ammonia. Ammonia is now no longer an issue but both the bucket the clowns are in, as well as the QT tank has about 0.5-1 ppm nitrites. I added some prime to the bucket where the clowns are. I also tested a new batch of RODI water as a control, and it's reading 0 nitrites with the same test.
What the heck?!?!?!?! Has anyone ever seen this? The only think i can think of is that the QT tank and the bucket have Tropic Eden reef flakes sand that i'm keeping in a plastic tuperware container to keep ph and kh stable. I just took some and put it in the new RODI water i'm making to see if has an effect, but i'm truly at a loss. I definitely messed up by not making sure everything was good before i got the clowns, but now i have them, and I'm trying to get them through this. Does anyone have any advice??
