Hi! New and confused

[Chris_jennings]

As you get more nitrites your nitrates will suddenly rocket, don't worry this is normal during a fishless cycle and suggests you are close to the end.
Do a 50% water change and retest after 24 hours. Looks like it is going well.

[Fish]

As you get more nitrites your nitrates will suddenly rocket, don't worry this is normal during a fishless cycle and suggests you are close to the end.
Do a 50% water change and retest after 24 hours. Looks like it is going well.

Thank you Shall I add ammonia straight after a water change or wait until tomorrow after I’ve tested?

Also something I’ve been wondering, when I finally get to add some fish and do a 20% water change a week, won’t that mean that the temp will drop briefly while the heater does its thing? Is this okay for the fish to deal with?

[Chris_jennings]

Add ammonia after the water change yes.

With a small water change of 20% the temp won't drop that much. I do 50% water changes and add some hot water to
what i put back in to approximate the temperature, I don't use a thermometer just by touch.

[fr499y]

looks like you still have 0.25ppm ammonia, top it up a bit to try and hit 1 or 2ppm.
Don't worry about testing PH as its not worth doing as the cycle shouldn't crash with a PH of 7.4/7.6

[Fish]

looks like you still have 0.25ppm ammonia, top it up a bit to try and hit 1 or 2ppm.
Don't worry about testing PH as its not worth doing as the cycle shouldn't crash with a PH of 7.4/7.6

I’ve just done a 50% water change as Chris kindly advised. You might be right on the ammonia, it’s so hard to read colours, and it looks different depending on how close you place them to the white card. This was exactly the same reading as above, but no gap!


I’ll add half the amount of ammonia I guess and see what it reads in an hour.

Thanks everyone!

[plankton]

I would suggest putting the test tubes on a sheet of white paper to cut out the darkness of the surface.
The only time the ph will drop is when it's soft(ish) water, and then you don't want it to go below 6.2.

[Fish]

I would suggest putting the test tubes on a sheet of white paper to cut out the darkness of the surface.
The only time the ph will drop is when it's soft(ish) water, and then you don't want it to go below 6.2.

I don’t know why I tested it tbh, I think because I tested the nitrates and they’re a pita to do, I went all in and did all of them Good idea, don’t know why I didn’t think of the paper underneath, will try later!

[Martinspuddle]

The only time the ph will drop is when it's soft(ish) water, and then you don't want it to go below 6.2.

...unless you plan on breeding Cardinal Tetras.

[Fish]

Used the white paper But I don’t really get it, I would have though after doing a 50% water change yesterday that all of the readings would have been lower Because if you start to get nitrites and nitrates after you’ve added fish, isn’t a big water change meant to help that?

Yesterday before water change -


Today, after 50% water change yesterday and adding ammonia up to just under 2ppm.




I was honestly secretly hoping it would all be clear today and I could go shopping on Monday, but that’s clearly not going to happen Though I’m glad I went window shopping, the largest aquatic shop (not pah) had a lot of dead fish, some had awful skin (in particular 2 puffer fish), tanks with smeared algae over it so you couldn’t even see the fish, and everything was over priced (api test kit for £50!).

[Fish]