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Hi, my tank was running fine up until the last three days, when i noticed my serprea tetras were starting to lose pigment. at first i thought this would pass and may be to do with me leaving the light on for 24 hours. But when this fading continued i thought i better check the water quality.

My stats were:
Am - .5
Ni - .25
Ni - 0
pH - 6.2

firslty my pH has never been a problem, i don't understand why its droped off the charts (tap water is 7 and i maintian 7 without any probs)

So i had some new plants to put in and decided to rearange etc so i did a full gravel vac and 25% water change and returned my pH to neutral, and re tested everything.

Am - .25
Ni - 0
Ni - 20
pH - 6.2

Has my tank decided to recycle because i cleaned my filter 1 week ago (note when i did this i only washed the sponges in my canister not the ceramics so i shouldn't have lost to much bacteria)

Also why would my nitrites have been 0 test 1 and 20 test 2, could this be from stirring up gravel?

Any clues on what is happening and why?

Hi,
There could be several things occurring ranging from the
very simple to more complex.

First, whenever there is a sudden change in your regular
readings, take a water sample to your LFS and have them
check it. If they get similar readings, then you have the
problem and need to continue to look into it. If they have
readings similar to your old readings, then your reagents
are at fault and are probably old, or contaminated, or
both. In that case you would purchase fresh, new test
reagents and retest your water.

When you clean your filter, depending upon what you do,
and how through your are, you can kill off the bacteria
colonies that live in the filter and change ammonia to
nitrite to nitrate. However, that is but a small portion
of the bacteria colonies. The vast majority of the colonies
exist within the tank itself and live in the gravel (on
each grain) and on the sides of the glass and any
ornaments, etc. Generally, cleaning a filter will only
cause a small shift in readings and those should clear up
with a day or two.

If you have decreasing pH, and increasing of Ammonia, and
Nitrates, then you could have the beginnings of what is
commonly called Old Tank Syndrome (OTS). The root cause
of this is lack of aquarium maintenance (water changes,
gravel vacuuming, over crowding, and over feeding).

This is a site devoted to OTS, its causes, and resolution:

http://www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html


The resolution is to make frequent water changes, say
20%, once a week, and combine that with vacuuming the
unplanted sections of the tank at the same time.
Whenever you vacuum the unplanted sections, you should
first, mentally divide the unplanted sections into say
quarters. Then clean a section with each water change.
With the next water change, clean a different section,
and so on till the entire tank has been cleaned a section
at a time. When that is done, start back with the first
section, and continue.

Hope this helps...
Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

No, it is not old tank syndrome. further though my pH has dropped back to 6.6 overnight. I have brought it back up to seven, if it drops again i think i will go nuts.

Not much to add other than back up Frank. Certainly take a good sample of your water to your local LFS as well take all your testing equpment (what do you have?) It "could" be old and not giving you the correct readings.

Also take a sample of your water supply.

Please let us know of the testing results.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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