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I have had my 30 gallon tank set-up for 4 months and it has been fully cycled. I added the last of the stock list on October 25, and have not added anything since. My nitrites stayed a zero for a week after adding the last fish, but since I added 20 plants on November 1 I've been getting small (.5 ppm) nitrite spikes. At first I thought I used too much ferts for the plants, but how would this cause nitrites to spike? I also layed off feeding the fish (because I know that I was overfeeding)for two days (this last Saturday and Sunday) and the nitrites went to zero in that time. I fed the fish on Monday, did my regular weekly 25% water change on Tuesday and fed the fish again, trying not to overfeed. I didn't add any ferts for the plants. Now, here it is Wednesday and the nitrites are back up to .5 ppm!!! What is going on in my tank? I have all my fish listed on my profile, I have two filters: The Penguin 170 with bio-wheel rated for up to 40 gallons and a Whisper 20i rated for up to 20 gallons, so I am very well filtered and have not had a problem. This nitrite situation first reared it's ugly head on November 4th and I can't seem to get a handle on it. Can anyone tell me what the problem is?

(I posted this in the water qual. thread but got no answers so I re-posted here)

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

Red,

That is rather odd. Though I recommend you continue your
fertilizing otherwise you will only cause a deficiency and
start an algal battle. As fo rht enitrites I am not sure what
to say, It might be possible that you disturbed the
bacterial colony when you go the plants, and you are going
through a very small mini-cycle. I wouldn't worry about it,
just conitnue your dosing, keep control of the feedings, and
do your waterchanges and the tank will sort itself out. If
you begin changing things around You might just worsen the
situation.

HTH,
Megil

your test kit could be old and not reading right. Could you do a test and also take some water to the LFS to see if you get similar readings?

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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

The test kit is pretty new and is agreeing with the quick strips. I had an epiphany last night and got to thiking about the carbon in my internal filter and when the last time I changed it was??? So I took it out. I don't know if that's the problem, but y'all should have seen how gunky it was. Anyway, instead of putting in a new carbon filter, I opened up a new one, dumped the carbon chips in the trash, rinsed out the filter floss that it was in, put it back on the cartridge and put that in the filter. Now I will have the benefit of mechanical filtration (possibly biological too) without having to worry about the carbon. My nitrites have come down to .25 ppm so I'm thinking that I may have it under control.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

Are all the plants growing or is there 1 or 2 dying? Dying plants can add alot of ammonia and nitrite. Possibly too much for the bacteria to handle.

They are all growing now. All my corkscrew vallisneria died off, but most of them are coming back. The leaves on them turned clear and fell off. I guess they didn't care for the shipping. Nothing else died. Here is the plant list:

1) crypt wendtii green
1) crypt lucens
7) corkscrew vallisneria
1) amazon sword
2) crypt wendtii red
1) java fern
7) dwarf saggitaria

All plants are doing well, just the vallisneria had problems, but it's starting to rebound.

Last edited by crazyred at 10-Nov-2005 19:37

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."