Water Parameter Confusion!

My axies have been in the fridge for all this, but my water is just being hormonal with its readings. a couple days ago, i noticed my axies had their gills forward, so i checked my perameters and realized my amonia and nitrites were too high for them to be living in. they were immediately fridged with fresh water and get changed daily.

the tank, with lots of java fern and anubias, as well as a moss ball and decorations, then proceeded to increase in nitrites by double. i've been doing 20-50% daily water changes since the axies were out, but my nitrites were only increasing, no matter the new water. amonia continued to rest around .5-1.

so yesterday, i did a 50% water change after the readings had been 1 amonia and 5 nitrites, and today the nitrites are completely gone, the amonia is about .25, and nitrates are barely 5...what's going on?? am i killing the bacteria somehow, is it actually cycled, or how do i look at these? i had similar readings last time my axies were being fridged for similar water issues, and i put them back in once i had readings like i do now. but i don't want to put them in, if its just going to repeat...again.

any ideas/knowledge on the subject?

Re: Water Perameter Confusion!

What are you feeding your guys and how often are you housecleaning? If you are using large rocks as a substrate, nasties can creep down between and throw off your parameters for sure. Your decorations can hide nasties too. What kind of filter are you using and when was the last time you cleaned it? Sorry for the questions, but sounds like you have some sort of ammonia source lurking around or your cycle is crashing for some reason.

Re: Water Perameter Confusion!

i feed them earthworms every other day about. i try to go through the tank and pick up any poops or random foods (they get the occasional frozen bloodworm) about every day, to every other day, as well.

they have sand as a substrate, a few rocks to act as anchors for their plants, a couple hides that are rooted in the sand and a canister filter that i'm not positive of the brand name.

i mentioned the decorations and forgot to explain, but i have another fish tank with just fish that is healthy in its cycle, so the decorations are from their tank. my axie tank is actually bare of decorations, more or less (there's one random tiki). the filter was cleaned only about a week ago, since i thought of switching to a non-filter set-up, then changed my mind a couple days after since the water was TOO still, and my bubbler had decided to break. my cycle i believe crashed around that time, so i think maybe i killed off a large majority of bacteria by losing the filter media, then replacing a clean one...would that be a good cause for the last crash?

i can't figure it out, but my cyles just keep crashing this last month. ><;
i'll do a thorough clean of the tank later tonight (i'm currently at my family's house and away from the tank) to be sure there's no amonia source, but was there also a chance it could be some dead plant matter? some of my recently purchased java fern had a couple brownish leaves in the bunch.

and questions are no problem! i just hate typing so much; i feel like i don't shut up.:wacko:

Re: Water Perameter Confusion!

also, is there anything else i could transfer from my healthily cycled fish tank other than the decorations? all that's left are some rocks. they have sand and they're filter was just changed about a week or so ago as well.

Re: Water Perameter Confusion!

I'd say you killed your bacteria in your filter , which is where most of your bacteria live, so you are more than likely cycling again. Out of the tank is probably a very good place for your axies to be right now.
Your test results will look a little funny right now because you do have some bacteria in your tank and sand that will be doing what all good bacteria does, turning ammonia into Nitrate, but there's not enough bacteria left in the tank to cope with all the waste from your axies so ammonia will rise quite significantly until the bacteria colony is large enough to cope. Dead bacteria can also produce ammonia as it rots but there's not much you can do about that for now aside from wait for the new ones to grow and deal with it. Decaying plant matter will also create ammonia. Brown leaves will eventually decay (go mushy and fall apart) but brown leaves aren't a big problem until they start to decay.

Make sure when you 'clean' your filter that you only clean the 1st stage, the course filter sponge. This sponge is largely for mechanical filtration and houses comparatively little bacteria. Be sure to clean it gently all the same and only in dechlorinated/tank water. Cleaning the biological media (the remaining layers of your filter) should be avoided as you will lose too much bacteria and your cycle will crash each time so leave them alone.

Looks like you're in for a bit of a wait while your tank cycle get's back on track and I'd be watching your fish tank for signs of cycling as well since it has a new/clean filter on it as well.

As for what you could add from the other tank the biggest help along is probably by adding a little of filter media from a well cycled filter but I'm not sure if you have one of those right now. You're probably better to just wait it out. From my experience adding a bacteria source from an existing tank reduces the cycle time by very very little in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Water Perameter Confusion!

oi, just what i feared. >.<

then it looks like they're going to get fridged for a while. good thing i have an empty mini fridge to use!

and thank you for the explanation. at least this way i know what's up, even if i'm not particularly thrilled about it.

Yeah cycling is no fun at all. Hopefully though it will be a nice short one for you. Don't worry about it too much, happens to the best of us bacteria can be such finicky little things. Good news is they WILL grow back and you will be up and running before you know it.

Just keep testing your water and change some when needed to keep your ammonia to or below 0.8 and Nitrite should be below 0.5 These would obviously need to be much lower if you have any animals living in the tank while it's re-cycling more around 0.25 for each nasty.