Do I have need to worry?

yoshi333 · 01-25-2002, 10:15 PM

When your tank has reached its equilibrium point (ammonia and nitrites are 0 and nitrates are low), the amount of bacteria in your tank is low b/c of no ammonia for food, right? I just added a scooter blenny and a maroon clown 3 days ago. I fed the fish lightly and quickly netted anything they didn't eat. I just checked my water levels and my ammonia is .25, nitrite is 2, nitrate is 40. I'm wondering if this is from my cleanup crew die-off or from the 2 fish. Will my bacteria colony grow fast enough to rid the toxins? BTW, I have a 40 gal with 30 lbs LR and 40 lbs LS.

Should I quickly use activated carbon to remove the toxins? If so, what kind of filter should I use for the carbon?

FishDaddy · 01-25-2002, 10:52 PM

Yoshi,
Your tank may not have bounced back enough from your recent fish deaths to accomodate two fish at once. The biosystem with just 30# LR in a new 40 gal. tank just isn't strong enough to process the fish waste yet. Another 10-15 lbs. sure would help.

You may want to consider taking the fish back to the LFS and let them park them for you until the tank settles down some more.

I would do a series of water changes; say 10 gallons at first, then 5-7 gallons a day for the next few days.
Do you have a skimmer yet? If not, this might be an instance where you might need to run a power filter for a while as strictly a temporary measure until you can get some more LR and skimmer. Whisper power filters have always been reliable for me.
HTH,
Dick

beach bum · 01-25-2002, 11:49 PM

I have to second FishDaddy about stocking slowly, one fish at a time is plenty. Now I'm no scientist, but with regards to "equilibrium point", your tank has reached a balance when the nitrifying bacteria is present in sufficient quantity to breakdown waste. If your test kit measures zero it doesn't mean no waste is being produced, rather it means the bacteria are doing their job. If you add anything organic to the tank - in this case food & fish & fish waste - there will be a period of catch up time for the bacteria, they don't appear overnight. The trick is to keep the new additions spread out enough that you don't reach toxic levels and stress the fish/corals/inverts.

Also, maybe you should double check your test results to make sure you are getting accurate readings.

fwiw, chris