Hi guys,
I am a bit confused and I am looking for help.
I cycled my 32g tank a month ago and I have in my tank about 18 inverts (small hermits, small crabs, small snails, a sea star and a sea urchin); no fish, no corals. All happy, active, eating a lot, etc..
I was checking the water parameters carefully and I had all water parameters in good condition but in the last three-four days something weird happened.
- My cleaner shrimp died (he had a big isopod tho)
- I called the fish store that sold me the shrimp and they told me to bring some water to check the parameters.
- Nitrites results were high (0,18ppm) and they told me the shrimp died because of that and not for the isopod or a combination of both events.
- They suggested performing a 30% water change to remove part of the nitrites from the water + remove part of the sand bed because I really had too much sand. I put 16kg of sand and I removed 8kg. So now I have 8kg. All good.
- When removing the sand I made a mess, the water was grey, but after a couple of hours, the water was crystal again all the inverts were happy and fine again and... my skimmer finally started producing a thick foam... I had nothing for a month!
- I performed a 30% water change. Check the nitrites and were down from 0,18ppm to 0,13ppm.
- This morning (after almost 1,5 days from the water change) I checked again the nitrites and the result was 0,24ppm.
- FYI, I also have live copepods so I am dosing phytoplankton every day in the tank.
- I have Hanna checker nitrite ULR (Therefore results are in ppb. I multiply x3,29 and then /1000. to get the actual result in ppm.)
What should I do now? Is this a new tank syndrome?
- Should I add some nitrifying bacteria?
- Should I use some No2 reducer such as sera Nitrite-minus?
All the creatures look fine and happy tho.
On the other side, I read a lot about @Lasse and @Randy Holmes-Farley about the non-toxicity of NO2 (also the written article) but I am a newbie and I constantly get different information from fish stores, the web, and forum).
Thanks for your help!
I am a bit confused and I am looking for help.
I cycled my 32g tank a month ago and I have in my tank about 18 inverts (small hermits, small crabs, small snails, a sea star and a sea urchin); no fish, no corals. All happy, active, eating a lot, etc..
I was checking the water parameters carefully and I had all water parameters in good condition but in the last three-four days something weird happened.
- My cleaner shrimp died (he had a big isopod tho)
- I called the fish store that sold me the shrimp and they told me to bring some water to check the parameters.
- Nitrites results were high (0,18ppm) and they told me the shrimp died because of that and not for the isopod or a combination of both events.
- They suggested performing a 30% water change to remove part of the nitrites from the water + remove part of the sand bed because I really had too much sand. I put 16kg of sand and I removed 8kg. So now I have 8kg. All good.
- When removing the sand I made a mess, the water was grey, but after a couple of hours, the water was crystal again all the inverts were happy and fine again and... my skimmer finally started producing a thick foam... I had nothing for a month!
- I performed a 30% water change. Check the nitrites and were down from 0,18ppm to 0,13ppm.
- This morning (after almost 1,5 days from the water change) I checked again the nitrites and the result was 0,24ppm.
- FYI, I also have live copepods so I am dosing phytoplankton every day in the tank.
- I have Hanna checker nitrite ULR (Therefore results are in ppb. I multiply x3,29 and then /1000. to get the actual result in ppm.)
What should I do now? Is this a new tank syndrome?
- Should I add some nitrifying bacteria?
- Should I use some No2 reducer such as sera Nitrite-minus?
All the creatures look fine and happy tho.
On the other side, I read a lot about @Lasse and @Randy Holmes-Farley about the non-toxicity of NO2 (also the written article) but I am a newbie and I constantly get different information from fish stores, the web, and forum).
Thanks for your help!