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Cycle issues

Star

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Jun 28, 2010
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Wirral, UK
I've put this in free for all because it is for my tropical tank and not my axie tank. I bought an 'established' trop tank last week with fish, etc, brought home 60% of the water roughly but everything was filthy, think thick brown sludge... There were 5 filters in there that were all clogged up, it's only a 2ft. Anyhoo, after cleaning it today (not had a chance before now because of work and exams) I ended up doing a 75% ish change because the water after all the scrubbing was vile. Put 40L of clean tap water, added the correct seachem prime dosage and tested the readings as I expected them to be a tad off perfect since the sand had been stirred up. The ammonia was at 1 and the nitrite was darker than 5 so I took all the water out and did a 90% change again. Tested the readings, the ammonia is 0.5 now but the nitrite is still over 5!
Meanwhile my poor fish are sat in a 1ft tank with their temp dropping. I've never had this issue with the axies and I know there are a lot of clued up people here with aquatics so thought this was a good place to ask. I really don't have the time to do another 90% change, let alone more. Is there any quick fix for this? i.e if I add a double or triple dose of seachchem prime to the water, would it help bring my readings down? I don't want to lose my new fish, especially not my three cat fish. I didn't realise the tank would be this bad, it didn't look good but I figured a large change would do the job
 

aeviette

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Jun 2, 2011
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Eep, not good! Could it be algae? The filter in my tropical tank gets a bit overrun with the stuff. Maybe cut back on feeding for a bit. Are any of your fish algae eaters? I've got otos and never see any algae in the tank any more (just in the filter, annoyingly). Do a couple more big changes over the next few days and see what happens with the levels?
 

Star

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Jun 28, 2010
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Wirral, UK
It could be algae since the glass was covered in it. I've put them back in for now and just hoping for the best :( I've got 1 algae eater but he just seems stressed. I gave it a triple dose of prime so will do a change and tests again tomorrow I guess and hope they all survive
 
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