# Nitrates to nitrite conversion in new tank---fish sick



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Hi Everyone,

I'm back after a long absence and I can finally claim to have turned my 29g into a NPT after, what, years of planning? We did it on the 2/22/07. Well, in an effort to keep stress levels down on my fish while they were transferred out and back into the now planted tank, I saved their water, not thinking about how high the nitrates were in this old tank water, and now I've got that nitrate to nitrite conversion that Diana has talked about.

Long story short, my precious angel and blue ram are sick! Help, they have that "septicemia" look with the ram's outer dorsal fin ragged and bloody red. The Angel has blood red splotches through his dorsal fin and on his back and one eye. Both are acting normal and eating.

OK, I know, I have to do a water change to get the nitrates, and now nitrites, down. But I hate to put antibiotics in a newly started NPT. Think that just doing gentle water changes (slow, matched ph etc) will be enough? I do have some Maracyn on hand, but, ugh, I hate using meds, but, aww, these fish are my babies!

The nitrite is 0.1, ammonia=0 and nitrates were somewhere between 40 or 80---I can't tell on these darned Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kits!

So far I have packed the tank with the following plants:
water wisteria
crypt spiralis
crypt wendtii
anacharis
cabomba
huge mat of java fern
java and christmas moss
melon sword 
tropica sword
jungle vals
twister vals
water lettuce
salvinia 
hornwort
a water sprite is on order to soak up more Nitrogen!

The substrate is 1.5 Hyponex potting soil and 1.5" walmart pea gravel
The Lighting is a wopping 130W Coralife that I can use as 65W or 130W plus it gets afternoon sun. Now that all the plants are in I'm using 130W trying to get the nitrogen down, so far water is clear.

By the way, where is Diana, Flagg? Dataguru? Jane?

Thanks for any advice and it's so good to be back!

Javalee


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

Your main concern at this point is getting the nitrite level down quickly. The FIRST thing I would do is add Amquel Plus in the recommended dosage to detoxify the nitrite and buy you some time. I would also use it in the replacement water as your dechlorinator until the problem is under control. After that, use whatever dechlor product you like, as Amquel is more expensive than most dechlor products. Normally, we use Genesis, which is one drop per gallon, but when we suspect a nitrite problem, we switch to Amquel or at least add it in addition to the Genesis product. Amquel Plus will work as a dechlorinator OR to detoxify existing nitrite, nitrate, and ammonia in an aquarium. 

Please go and get some Amquel Plus right away before you have permanent damage to your precious fish! We learned the hard way on some of our fancy goldfish (we have angels, too now, and many other fishes). After 15 years, two out of three of our fancy goldfish died. The last one was spared death but suffered from the same symptoms you are seeing. Switching to a natural planted tank helped a lot. The surviving female goldfish is over 16 years old now. She shows signs of having been through difficult times but is still alive and doing well. 

You could do a 20% water change several times in a day and get about 60% lower nitrite levels, then do a 50% change and you would be getting close to a zero level. By the time you do the 50% change you would have them pretty close to tap water pH. If the tap pH is close, I would do a couple of 50% changes and get it down even faster.

It doesn't look like an antibiotic would help. The symptoms are not that of disease. But ltet's see what others have to say, and you have to decide on the appropriate treatment since they are YOUR fish, not ours. 

I'm curious as to why you used a potting soil instead of a topsoil product?

Some are pretty close to topsoil, but some have added fertilizers (and maybe other additives). Hyponex, if I read the label correctly, adds Perlite. I don't think Perlite would be a problem but we've never used anything but the cheapest topsoil with no additives whatsoever. We've never used Perlite in any of the soils we've put in any tanks we've set up for ourselves or other people in our club. Since it's used in some filtration, though, it could be safe. You'll want to do some research on it. 

Nitrates can cause some of the symptoms you are experiencing, but your levels are WAY too low for that to be the case, even if your test kit is old.


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## littleguy (Jan 6, 2005)

Javalee, first off welcome back!!  I was wondering if you were still on the forum. I remember reading a lot of great posts from you in previous years. Glad you were finally able to set up that el natural display tank!

Sounds like t2000kw can really speak from experience. If for some reason you can't get your hands on amquel, you could also try seachem prime, which supposedly detoxifies nitrite as well.

Alternatively, you can also add regular aquarium salt to detoxify nitrite. It doesn't take much. Read here for a really nice discussion.

I'll add this - if you do have to medicate, I'd buy a 10 gallon tank for 10 bucks and do the medicating there. Situate it in a well lit place by a window, or give it some lighting if you have any extra. No substrate, just bare bottom tank. Add treated water, hopefully a similar ph and hardness as your aged water. Fill with some of that water lettuce and hornwort you have from the display tank. Then transfer your sick fish there and medicate there. To me the extra effort would be worth it. I wouldn't want to medicate my display tank unnecessarily. Once the fish were recovered you could easily tear down the tank.


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## goldielovr (Apr 12, 2006)

Word of caution on the salt idea though, you don't want to be salting plants, I don't think. I know salt can do wonders for goldies when they get out of sorts, but can you use salt on tropicals like angels?

Guess I need to read that link.

Melis


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## littleguy (Jan 6, 2005)

Yeah read the link. It's a very small amount of salt. Not a concern to plants.


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

I think your solution lies in clean water. I would change out as much water as possible. I don't know your tap water situation so you have to make the call on how to proceed. I just had a similar situation, I over pruned an El natural tank and didn't watch it close enough to see how it responded, it is a Cherry Shrimp tank which gets fed heavily, after the pruning the Ammonia and Nitrite levels spiked and I didn't notice until I had about 100 dead cherries. My method of detoxifying a tank is to put the siphon in one end of the tank and the fill hose in the other, I drain it down about 25% and keep the siphon going and refill and repeat as the water supply is faster than the drain. I watch the temperature and keep testing the water until the problem is gone. I probably did a continuous 300% water change. Now you may not be able to use your tap water like I can use my well water but you could set up some buckets to treat refill water and do a similar process and over a few hours you will have your tank detoxified and clean.

The fish will handle a Ph shift better than sitting in that toxic water.

Just remember what My local Health dept. inspector told me once. "The solution to pollution is dilution".

Good luck,

Brian


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Thanks Everyone! I just love this place, with everyone so humble, helpful, and knowledgeable!

t2000kw, Thank you for sharing your experience. I wasn't sure if they had an infection like finrot from the nitrite. I didn't know that it was the nitrite itself. I guess that's good news because I can definitely get rid of the nitrite. The reason I use potting soil is because it's what Diana recommends. However, I was looking for Earthgro Topsoil and Ace Hardware Organic Topsoil just because I've heard others say they have good results with it. Unfortunately, I'm housebound with a chronic illness and have to rely on others who patiently shop for me. After calling 5 different places, all I could find in our area was the Hyponex. The Earthgro was sold out, and I now think the employee at Ace just didn't check thoroughly ! So I'm stuck with the Hyponex which turned out to be packed with pine bark, as everything here is because of the heavy timber industry around us. I'm worried about future problems with methanol release, but for now, the nitrite is definitely coming from the nitrate conversion; it only just showed up yesterday.

Littleguy, thanks for the welcome:-D ! It's good to hear from a familiar plant-lover! Yes, I'm just tearing down my 10g so it should be available if needed, and it is in front of a window, so great suggestion about the water lettuce. I'm using salt on some other sick fish right now and it seemed to perk them up. 

Bpimm, we did a 30% water change last night with tap water. My tap water is about 8.8 and my tank is now 8.2 so I didn't want to do more than that. Now the nitrite is unmeasurable, and the nitrate is reading around 15ppm! Much better! I'm now in the interpretable range on those @*%& test kit cards. I think we will do one more water change this evening if I can get some spring water to cut the pH or tomorrow if I can't---don't want to add to their stress with mismatched pH water changes.

Thanks all! I've got the Coralife putting out the full 130W today and hoping that the anacharis and floaters will pull out even more nitrogen during the day.

I hope my beauties recover ok! Thankfully they're still piggy, and seem to really be enjoying checking out what real plants and snails and shrimp are.

I'll post a photo as soon as I can.

Javalee


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

If you use water with a lower pH to replenish your tank water, you can bump up the pH if you need to with some bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). There's a forumla and even a calculator online for that somewhere. Perhaps someone can post it here. It also helps stabilize the pH if you have a low amount of temporary hardness (KH). We have a low KH and high GH so we sometimes use that for our situation.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

From what I'm reading here in the forum, you want topsoil instead of potting soil, but some potting soil is just top soil. Other potting soils have fertilizers and other additives in it. Topsoil shouldn't have any additives, but I would check first. The cheap stuff from Wal Mart for $1.09 or so works fine (should be available in about a month). But since you already have potting soil in there, just ride it out and things should be fine once the nitrite spike settles down.


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

On second inspection, it may be too late for my beloved ram. His spine is clearly purple and I think he's hemoraging there. I can measure no nitrites now, but it may just be damage from yesterday. That makes me so sad. I new the potting soil was nitrite free so I skipped one day of measuring and that's when the conversion started, I guess. At least the others rode out the spike ok.

t2000kw, Using cheap potting soil with no fertilizers is just what Diana Walstad, the creator of this soil-tank method recommends in her book. The Hyponex has no fertilizers and perlite is a natural product too (it's just heat treated to make it rock hard), and is easily removed by soaking the soil in water and skimming it off the top. It's not toxic to fish. 

I'm sure many topsoils work well too. I tried our own from our land and had deficiency problems. As I said, I can't be picky because I can't shop for myself, and we live in a very rural area; topsoil simply could not be attained now. I mostly have to order supplies on the internet.


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## t2000kw (Jul 29, 2006)

I thought it was the other way around. Someone in another thread had it that way also. We've used topsoil for that reason, but in any case we do check for additives of any kind before buying.

I don't have the book to check with here but the important thing is not to have additives. The Perlite, as you mention, is volcanic rock expanded several times. I don't think it has an overabundance of nutrients to throw off your tank. The web site doesn't compare it with regular soil, but it does say it is neutral in pH, so it's safe that way, too.

But you have to use what you can get, and right now the cheap stuff is not in season yet. We had a bag left over to do a natural tank setup demo for out club Sunday afternoon or the person whose tank it was wouldn't have found any soil.



javalee said:


> t2000kw, Using cheap potting soil with no fertilizers is just what Diana Walstad, the creator of this soil-tank method recommends in her book. The Hyponex has no fertilizers and perlite is a natural product too (it's just heat treated to make it rock hard), and is easily removed by soaking the soil in water and skimming it off the top. It's not toxic to fish.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

*Temporary Oxygen Problems with Potting Soil*



javalee said:


> On second inspection, it may be too late for my beloved ram. His spine is clearly purple and I think he's hemoraging there. I can measure no nitrites now, but it may just be damage from yesterday. That makes me so sad. I new the potting soil was nitrite free so I skipped one day of measuring and that's when the conversion started, I guess. At least the others rode out the spike ok.
> 
> t2000kw, Using cheap potting soil with no fertilizers is just what Diana Walstad, the creator of this soil-tank method recommends in her book. The Hyponex has no fertilizers and perlite is a natural product too (it's just heat treated to make it rock hard), and is easily removed by soaking the soil in water and skimming it off the top. It's not toxic to fish.
> 
> ...


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Hi Diana,

Good to hear from you. Thanks so much for responding to my post! Happily, my little ram has come around, and the angel rebounded rapidly. Thank goodness, that even though I momentarily forgot about the nitrate to nitrite conversion, at least I DID KNOW about it from your writings! That saved my fish.

Now I'm getting zero readings for ammonia and nitrite and the nitrates are hovering around 15-25 (some of this could be test kit variation), and I'm really surprised that all these plants and the 130W have not soaked up all the nitrate yet, but maybe the plants are going after the ammonia first, as you so often relate. 

Anyway, everything is fine because I've decided to keep the HOB filter going and not put the powerhead in until the nitrates go down. The HOB is doing a good job of aeration, and the old filter media in there may be doing some converting of its own and returning some nitrite to nitrate.

I have new sprouts on the melon sword, my first flower coming off of my old tropical sword, and the poorly tiger lotus is coming around with a new shoot as well! I'm very pleased, afterall, and when we can find our camera cable, I'll share my photos. My fish are as pleased as I am. The khulis are frolicking in the sand pit and plants, and the cichlids are enjoying chasing shrimp in the plants!

Javalee


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Hi Javalee,

I am so pleased that your fish are okay. Everything's a little tricky for the first few weeks. After that, I hope that you can just sit back and enjoy some nice plant growth and happy fish!

Diana


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