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What would be the Ammonia and Nitrite critical point that would demand an immediate water change for a 35gal. tank with 4 Damsels?

Thx in advance.

Sponge

If its detectable its critical..SW fish dont tolerate ammonia and nitrite like fw fish can.

Could you be more factual. I know that 0 ammo, 0 nitrites is the goal.

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Sponge :88)

Last edited by ACIDRAIN at 26-Dec-2005 18:25

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If you have any ammonia or nitrite, especially with livestock in the tank you should be doing water changes to try to reduce harm to the livestock. Why you are cycling with livestock is beyond my grasp anyway..even if you cant afford live rock, or dont want live rock there are other ways of doing it instead of putting the animals thru a cycle. SW fish are not like FW fish..most cannot be tank bred/raised and are wild harvested.

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Last edited by ACIDRAIN at 26-Dec-2005 18:26

Actually Bob, DRO there is correct. If you have any measurable readings, then your fish are in danger. For exact levels, 1ppm of ammonia and 0.5 ppm nitrites are considered hazardous to your SW fish. I only use these numbers because they are the lowest on my testers.

You should always cycle a SW tank with LR. However, anytime you add new fish, your tank will go through a mini cycle. As the SW cycle takes up to 6 times as long to complete, as FW does. You should add only one or two fish app every 3-5 weeks. And then daily check your readings. If you get any measurable readings of ammonia or nitrites you need to do a water change.

If you are not using LR, then I guess the damsels would be my first choice for a hardy fish to cycle with. But you will need to do many water changes for the health of the fish. Like 25% every couple days. With the LR you only need do like 25% a week till it is completed.

This is the main reason for having a much smaller stock of fish in a SW tank vs FW tank. The fish cannot tolerate any ammonia or nitrite what-so-ever. Sure you may have some that live through it, but their health has been hit if they do. So you keep less of a bioload so that the cycle can keep up with them, and does not crash.

In a SW tank, if after your cycle completes, you can crash it if it is over load. In other words, if the bioload becomes too much for the cylce to keep up with, the ammonia will spike hard fast and very high. This can in turn crash or kill your entire biological filter system. If this happens, you will most likely lose your entire stock. And then have to start over from complete scratch.

As I always say to all my Dark Side buddies, there are three things to always remember when doing a SW set up;
Patience, Patience, and more Patience! This is the key to a wonderful SW set up.

Edit; If you want to question my experience and knowledge, feel free to do so, but you might want to look at my profile first, especially my tanks.

Last edited by ACIDRAIN at 26-Dec-2005 17:21

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There is always a bigger fish...

I answered your question..but since you dont like the correct answer I guess I will leave it at that. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


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measure nitrite and ammonia in any established tank that is cared for by someone who knows what they are doing...ZERO detectible amounts on both of those...Its even possible to have ZERO readings on nitrate.

Once again...if you have ammonia or nitrite readings that are showing up on your test kits, do a waterchange.


Last edited by ACIDRAIN at 26-Dec-2005 18:47

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Acid : My readings of today are as follows :

Ammo : 0.40 ppm
Nitrite : 0.25 ppm
pH and salinity are within acceptable range.

I started my tank on Dec 21st and intriduced my fish the next day. So far, I did not make a single water change and the fish show no sign of distress. I monitor / test my tank everyday. If the levels stay as they are now, can I keep it going or do you suggest that I make a water change of 25% anyway ? Thank you for your answer which I found more factual and less emotional, thus more helpful than an ABSOLUTE answer.

Kind regards to both of you,

Sponge

Last edited by Sponge_Bob at 26-Dec-2005 17:36




Last edited by ACIDRAIN at 26-Dec-2005 18:06

I would do the water changes, especially if you are not using LR. As a fish only tank without LR will require them very regularly. I always suggest LR for any and all SW tanks. 1-3 lbs per gal, depending on what your load is going to be. And your numbers appear to show the start of the cycle. As stated already, the biological filter grows very slowly, so the ammonia and nitrites can rise very quickly. I would definitely do daily checks to watch for any drastic spiking. Your measurements are showing a quick rise as your tank has only been up for less than a week (only 4 days with fish), with those few fish in it. If you don't do a water change, they will more than double that in the next week.

Do your research, and yes you will find there are hundreds of different ways to set up a SW tank. My reef tank and the shark tank were both are ecosystems, and had not had a water change to either of them for several years. The reef tank was more than 5 years without a water change. Just top off for evaporation. And my ammonia and nitrites were always 0, and the nitrates did sometimes appear from time to time, but were gone just as quickly as that.

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There is always a bigger fish...

Acid : Ok, will proceed with 25% water change tomorrow. But no worries. I keep ammo at bay. It's been like that since day 2. I took steps to accelerate the cycle and lessen harm to the fish.

I know that a SW tank is more fragile and needs more attention than a FW tank. But no one will have me believe that Damsels can not endure a bit of ammo and nitrite because it is simply not the case.

As for live rocks, the only place I can get some REAL live rocks, not dead cured ones, is accross the country and since it's the holiday period, all AIR shipments are stopped 'til Jan 3rd. So... Even then, if I was to introduce now some LR in my tank, I would have to take back my fish BEFORE I do so because I would most likely kill my fish with a major ammo spike.

It's not as if I did not make any research beforehand...

Thx again !

Sponge

Thank you Acid. Can we close this thread now. I think it started off on a wrong note and it's not a good omen.

Sponge

Last edited by Sponge_Bob at 26-Dec-2005 19:06

Before this thread is closed, however, let me make some observations.

DRO is ultimately right when he says that we should aim for zero values of NH3, NH4+ and NO2- in a saltwater aquarium. Whether it is practical to do that in a particular setup, constrained by such factors as the aquarist's next pay cheque, of course, is a different issue.

However, the following snippet of wisdom from Graham F. Cox (one of the veterans of the saltwater game) should be informative ...

Freshwater fishes, quite often, live in habitats where the water bodies that form their homes are subject to change. That change may be seasonal (the transition from wet season to dry season in the tropics, and the following reverse transition) or it can be a short-term change such as the addition of rainfall runoff to a watercourse from the surrounding land (a change that is particularly relevant to rainforest fishes). Whatever changes may take place in those waters, even though they are smaller in magnitude with respect to concentrations of solutes and other matter than are found in some freshwater aquaria (principally because the water volumes are so much larger) the fact remains that freshwater fishes have adapted, in the main, to changes in water chemistry, and have the osmoregulatory machinery to cope. Consequently, freshwater fishes survive well in the aquarium in general, with the exception of certain specialised and fragile species with highly unusual requirements.

Saltwater fishes, on the other hand, experience no such changes in their environment. The coral reef has been, in terms of ambient water chemistry, one of the most stable environments on Earth for 50 million years. Consequently, reef fishes have not evolved the osmoregulatory machinery required to deal with any but the tiniest of changes in ambient water chemistry parameters. That some are still tough enough to survive the fluctuations in an aquarium is all the more remarkable in the light of this fact, and while it is to the aquarist's relief that such fishes exist as can survive the aquarium environment, this does not mean that one should take for granted the survivability of even the tougher marine fishes to anything like the extent that is possible with freshwater fishes.

When Cox penned his words (of which the above is a paraphrase rather than a verbatim quote) in the 1970s, it was a miracle to be able to keep marine fishes alive at all. Nowadays, of course, we know better, have better technology, a better understanding of the relevant science, and 30 more years of experience in the field disseminated through literature and the Internet. Which makes it possible now for fishes to be kept alive that once upon a time I regarded as 'impossibles'.

As for your own situation, if there exist constraints on getting your setup going that force you into a corner you'd rather not ibhabit, and you're stuck with keeping damsels in an incompletely cycled aquarium, then you should expend whatever effort is necessary to reduce the stress those fishes experience, and implement frequent water changes until the cycling is complete. However, the above mantra of 'patience, patience, patience' applies very heavily to saltwater systems. Forget that mantra for a moment and you risk expensive and heartbreaking losses, that I wouldn't wish you to suffer (and liekwise wouldn't wish the fish to suffer too).

At the moment, if it's at all possible, I'd aim for changing 10% of the water every day to keep ammonia and nitrite levels as low as possible until the cycling is complete. Once you're past the cycling peaks, and the system has stabilised, then you can move on to a more conventional water change régime. However, this will probably prove more expensive in the long run than cycling your aquarium with live rock, even though the initial capital outlay for the live rock looks steep to the uninitiated.

Oh, and I wish you good luck with your saltwater setup. It's not going to be an easy endeavour by any stretch of the imagination ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002