# Water change or not? (Cycle)



## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

I've been cycling my tank w/fish exactly a week today.
I jump started it a bit by removing some gravel, rocks and filter from my other tank and threw it in this tank. Haven't done a water change yet and went to test and it looks like my Nitrate levels are there, no nitrIte but reading a 0.7 on Ammonia. I thought ammonia wouldn't even show up since I'm reading Nitrate levels and no NitrIte. 

So anyways I was going to do a 20% change and my LFS tells me to hold off because I'll slow the process and to let the bacteria do its thing. Whats your guys take on this?


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## baileysup (Nov 25, 2009)

oh, to answer your question, i would do a 20% water change. yes. but that's me. see what others say as well. and DON'T OVERFEED!

this has been a touchy subject for me. i too am just starting out. i too am currently cycling a tank (10 gal). first off, 

1) what size is the tank?
2) what filter do you have?
3) do you have a bubble wand or an air stone?
4) what kind of fish do you have in the tank?
5) how many of each type of fish are in the tank?

those are 5 questions that will help the people here help you. now that we have that on the table, i will tell you what i know, and what i've been told. IMO, THE #1 THING THAT YOU MUST ABSOLUTELY NOT DO IS OVERFEED THE FISH!!!!!! once again, DO NOT OVERFEED THE FISH!!!!!this will greatly improve your chances of having a succesfull cycle with fish. i would suggest feeding them every other day, and only feed them enough to last them 2-4 minutes. my LFS told me not to let the ammonia get above .5 (some here, such as your LFS will be comfortable with a higher ammonia number, and you will get varied opinions). well that's all fine and dandy in a perfect world, but it's probably going to surpass .5 at times, and this is where i've run into most of my issues (probably cause i was overfeeding). understand that you will always have ammonia in your tank until the process is complete. you will not be able to get rid of it. if your ammonia was at .7, a 20% water change should have been enough to get it to .5. if you have to do water changes every day, make them small (20% or less). this will give the fish stability, and they need stability. if you ever read a large ammonia level, of say 2 or higher, you will have to perform a large water change of 50%-75%. you will only change a large volume of water like this if you need to, and never consecutively, because you will deplete the oxygen in the water to the point where your fish may die. i almost killed my espies this way. i tested my water and my ammonia was 1. so i did a 20% water change, and tested again. it was still at 1!(i know it doesn't make sense). so i said f it, and did a 50% change a few hours later. this is where i made the mistake. shortly after the large change, my 4 espies turned ghost white and were gasping for oxygen (i though they were goners). i did not have an air stone to oxygenate the water either. i was lucky they made it, and from that point on, i will never change that much water that fast again. IF you do a large water change as described, you will then go back to SMALL , STABLE water changes as needed. remember that STABILITY IN A TANK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LEVELS. fish don't like abrupt changes in their water, so as a fish keeper, you must make changes to the water as gradually as possible. they can handle a large water change once in a while, but that's it. not a lot, or all the time. if you still have trouble, there are ammonia detoxifying chemicals you can obtain, but i'm trying to cycle my tank without all the extra chemicals. i hope that what i wrote is clear enough that it makes sense, because i've been out of school for a long time, and i'm not the best writer. this is all i have for now, but if i think of anything, i'll be sure to post it (i'm sure i will). good luck, and lets see what the others have to say. like i said, i'm a newbie too.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Yes, it can take longer to cycle if you keep changing water to keep ammonia down. However, if you have fish in the tank, they will suffer if you let the ammonia get too high. So do the water change.


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## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

emc7 said:


> Yes, it can take longer to cycle if you keep changing water to keep ammonia down. However, if you have fish in the tank, they will suffer if you let the ammonia get too high. So do the water change.


Yea you're right, i'll most likely do a 20% tommro to bring down the ammonia a bit. I still dont get how theres NitrAte readings, no nitrIte but yet theres ammonia? Tells me theres not enough beneficial bacteria available yet, but, I should be seeing NitrIte levels no?


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## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

I think i figured out what happen...

A few days ago I was testing only NitrAtes in the tank, no nitrIte or ammonia. So I said I'll check again on Thursday and if NO ammonia or NitrItes i should be complete. Well I was using the filter for my 29 gallon goldfish tank in my 10 gallon to speed the process and vice versa. So when I took my new filter from the 29 gallon to put back on my 10 gallon I rinsed the filter pad thru some tap water just to make sure no Goldfish extras get into the 10 gallon and cause a ammonia spike. Which I think I ended up doing anyways because the chlorine from the tap must of killed most, if not all the beneficial bacteria I had growing on that pad.. 

As we all know, most of the bacteria is housed in the filter, so with that being said the gravel in the 10 gallon is not fully colonized, so the ammonia from the fish waste and food must be giving the bacteria a good fight seeing that I read a 0.7 on ammonia now. I'm going to grab some more gravel from the 29 gallon and sprinkle on the 10 gallon to give and take.. What you guys think?


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

gravel sprinkle is good. So is a 'scraping' from a old filter. You could have simple moved some nitrates over with the filter or fish. So don't count it cycled until nitrates are rising.


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## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

emc7 said:


> So don't count it cycled until nitrates are rising.


And ammonia is dropping.. Yea i know..
What level of Nitrates should I be looking for? And if I perform a water change it would deplete the nitrates aswell so its kinda hard to tell..


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## baileysup (Nov 25, 2009)

Mr. fish said:


> Yea you're right, i'll most likely do a 20% tommro to bring down the ammonia a bit. I still dont get how theres NitrAte readings, no nitrIte but yet theres ammonia? Tells me theres not enough beneficial bacteria available yet, but, I should be seeing NitrIte levels no?


this is the same scenario i have in my tank. i haven't had any nitrites in my tank for almost a week now, but still ammonia (.7), and nitrates (20ppm). i use to have .25 nitrites a while ago, but they just vanished. it's been cycling for over 3 weeks now.


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## baileysup (Nov 25, 2009)

Mr. fish said:


> And ammonia is dropping.. Yea i know..
> What level of Nitrates should I be looking for? And if I perform a water change it would deplete the nitrates aswell so its kinda hard to tell..


i've found that you will always have more nitrates, than ammonia and nitrites.


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## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

baileysup said:


> i've found that you will always have more nitrates, than ammonia and nitrites.


This is not always true..
In a tank that is just starting your tank you could have Ammonia and NO nitrAtes..

I'm just gonna do a 20% change today and sprinkle some of the gravel from my other tank and wait it out...should be complete in another week..


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## baileysup (Nov 25, 2009)

Mr. fish said:


> This is not always true..
> In a tank that is just starting your tank you could have Ammonia and NO nitrAtes..


what i meant to say was that after you start to see nitrates, i've found that you will always have more nitrates than ammonia and nitrites (if you want to put a test number on it). i said that because i saw that you already had nitrates from your post. at least that is what i've been seeing since i began my cycling process.


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## Trout (Mar 16, 2011)

My tap water actually has a nitrate level between 0 and 5 ppm  . Anyway, it is recommended that the nitrates be kept at 40 ppm or lower. Too high, and it may trigger an algae bloom. I'm STILL trying to get all the algae off of the sides of my 2.5 gallon tank. Whatever you do, don't let too much algae grow. Cleaning it off is quite a task, if you're trying to scrub (which I'm doing because I don't want to use all kinds of chemicals in such a small tank)


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## Cichlid Dude! (Mar 15, 2011)

When i cycled my five gal., I i didn't do the water changes, and my nitrates did spike. Good thing I had some plants in the tank! It never went high enough to cause damage, but it sure motivated me to change my water more! I think thats how most humans learn: trial and error.


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## Mr. fish (Mar 8, 2011)

Trout said:


> My tap water actually has a nitrate level between 0 and 5 ppm  . Anyway, it is recommended that the nitrates be kept at 40 ppm or lower. Too high, and it may trigger an algae bloom. I'm STILL trying to get all the algae off of the sides of my 2.5 gallon tank. Whatever you do, don't let too much algae grow. Cleaning it off is quite a task, if you're trying to scrub (which I'm doing because I don't want to use all kinds of chemicals in such a small tank)


Try a blackout for 4 days... That should help you with your algae problem.

Worked perfect on my other tank... Crystal clear.. Too much Light and lack of water changes is the key to algae blooms...


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