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HI all.

Ive had my 29 gal tank runing for almost 2 months now, and i can still detect Nitrates and nitrites in very high levels, but no ammonia.

The tank is stocked with 7 zebra danios that i used to help it cycle as well as 2 small unwanted kribs that were given to me.

One of the kribs appears to have nitrite posioning, but i cant seem to get rid of the stuff no matter how often i do water changes.

I will check my water supply to see if the compounds are present in the water.

Is there anything i can do to reduce it and possibly save my krib?

How high is 'very high'?


For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Nitrite are 4mg/l, and Nitrates are 200mg/l, both of which my test kit say are unacceptable/toxic.

Quite. 40 nitrate is considered harmful over time. 200 is considered lethal. The nitrite isn't far behind. Question is how did a tank that's only been setup for 2months with a fairly light stocking get that high?

First what test kits are you using? Strips are quite inaccurate and it could just be a false reading. Liquid kits are much better. Next if you have a good test kit run some tests on your tapwater and see what the values are. If water changes are not lowering the levels then chances are it's in the tap. If you don't have a good test kit take a sample of both your tank water and tap water to a local fish store that uses liquid test kits and have them test it.

based on current info all I can suggest is getting some bottled water and doing water changes with that. If your tap tests bad that's also still my recommendation to improve water conditions now. Don't use distilled or RO water without adding minerals and buffers to it. You want already buffered drinking water.

My tap water is fine, i used liquid test kits to test it. I asked the LFS man, but he wasnt much help. I will do another large water change, which i hope will dilute it.

If your tapwater is fine then you aren't doing enough water changes and you have got to be way overfeeding them or there is something in the tank that's breaking down to create these levels. You shouldn't accomplish that high of nitrates in 2months even if you did no water changes and maintenance. There's got to be something going into that tank that's causing levels like that. Does the tank have any driftwood? If so I would remove it to a bucket of clean water and see if the ammonia or nitrate levels start to rise after a few weeks of it sitting there. Remove anything else that might have organic material.

Don't feed the fish for the next few days. Fish don't actually need fed everyday. They benefit from a fast every now and then so they will be fine. Then do lots of moderate sized water changes. Somewhere around 25% at a time and I would do 2 changes today, 2 tomorrow, and 1 after that until the nitrates are below 40. Then do one every other day until they are below 20 and try to maintain them there.

Make sure you are doing gravel vacs and rinsing filter media. If you can see lots of junk floating around after you stir the gravel then there's too much fish waste and leftover food sitting around in the tank rotting. That probably means your overfeeding. Filter media generally needs rinsed every 1-2weeks(cannisters can go longer) in tankwater or dechlorinated water and then replace when it starts to get worn out.

The tank has a number of healthy plants, should i remove them too? I do not over feed my fish, i feed them sparingly a maximum of twice a day, but i do have apiece of bogwood in there that i will remove, as well as chips of bogwood that had fallen away from trh main peice.

Healthy plants should lower nitrates but any dying plants will contribute greatly to nitrates so inspect them closely. Most fish don't need fed twice a day and most people really overfeed when they do that. Heck most people can't manage to feed once daily without overfeeding. It's hard to give a certain measure for flakes though since 1 person's pinch can be 4 times that of someone elses. All I can suggest is to either take out 1 feeding or cut both feedings in about half and see how the tank does after awhile.

What you call sparingly could still be too much. Reduce your feeding to even less once a day and miss one day this can be done at the weekly water change.

How do you go about the water change and filtration cleaning. Are you adding a product like Sera Nitrivic to boost the good bacteria?

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I added a product called Bactozym, which is supposed to contain cultures of the good bacteria in capsule form. One inside my filter media, and one in the actual water. I think i might try another product to boost the good bacteria.

I don't think adding bacteria is going to solve much. It's been 2 months and I'd bet all the surfaces in the tank that can be occupied by bacteria have a good colony going. It looks more like there is more ammonia going into the tank than the amount of bacteria that can live in the tank can turn into nitrates. That's where the nitrites show up. Also increasing the number of bacteria is going to have no impact on nitrates except to increase them a little by converting the nitrite faster. That's trying to treat the symptoms instead of the problem. You need to fix why there is so much ammonia going into the tank and then you won't need to add extra bacteria.

The 'good' bacteria in capsule form are unfortunately not worth a dime. You have to get something like "biospira' which was continuously stored in a refrigerator. This will help. Contrary to popular belief not all bacteria are resistant to a wide variety of storage conditions. At this point follow the suggestion you got and also get a new test (according to the possibility that the reading is faulty). To save the krib: set up a quarantine tank or something smaller and add biospira to the water with the fish (and a fresh filter).

I heard that salt will reduce the toxic effects of nitrites. I can't remember why this is the case though but I read it somewhere that was authoritative. I don't know anything about kribs but I know that zebras should do ok with 1 tbsp salt/5 gallons. The long term fix though is reducing whatever is producing so much waste as has already been mentioned. Adding lots more plants can help out a little bit too as they will use the ammonia directly, preventing the breakdown of ammonia to nitrite/nitrate.

Hey all, i managed to reduce the nitrates way down to around 20, and the nitrites to around 0.1 by adding a liquid bacterial culture.

Also, my friend (who gave me the kribs) is packing up fish keeping, and gave me all his equipment, so he had a pretty established filter, which i put into my tank.

I know there was a risk of contaminating my tank, but i was willing to try anything! This coupled with many frequent water changes improved the quality of the water, so my fish are fine now! thaks for all the help!

Bacterial cultures wouldn't have any effect on nitrates (unless you have a special type of filter that houses an anaerobic bacterial culture that removes nitrates). I would guess that your water changes are probably what did the trick.