Fish: Re: [tropical fish club] Connie's Tank 9-27-12 and Free Ammonia test question

This all makes sense, Ray, thanks so much.
I guess I was getting discouraged a bit, but since the Nitrate
readings are going up a bit, that is a good sign the cycle is taking place.

I have distilled water in the house all the time.
Hubby uses it for his C-Pap. So that is not a problem.

Yes, today is PWC day.
I am about to go prepare the water in the buckets as they
need to sit a while to cool off. I will test the water before the PWC
and let you know what the readings say.

Thanks,
Connie

-------Original Message-------

From: sevenspringss@wmconnect.com
Date: 9/28/2012 7:51:49 AM
To: tropicalfishclub@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [tropical fish club] Connie's Tank 9-27-12 and Free Ammonia
test question

Connie,

"Clean" water most probably means water free of contaminents. Ideally,
distilled water might be best but I doubt if you need to go to that extreme.
You tap water or bucket/PWC new water would be fine, even though this water
has 0.25 ammonia. When you fill the sensor/vial, just be sure to fill and
empty it a few times with aquarium water before making the test.

Don't be discouraged that your cycle appears not to be progressing. Under
normal circumstances when cycling a tank without fish, it can take up to six
weeks -- and that's with adding about 4 to 5 drops per gallon of bottled
(clear, [not sudsy]) Ammonia every day. With fish in your tank, and needing
to keep them from getting stressed, it can take even longer as you need to
keep the Ammonia level much lower than this -- even though the Prime will
ensure it's converted to Ammonium. While the ammonia and nitrite are being
detoxed by the Prime, any high levels of them will cause stress on the fish
--
regardless that these organic wastes are no long toxic.

That your Nitrate is continuing to climb, shows you that your Ammonia and
Nitrite are both being converted (or else, you wouldn't have a Nitrate
reading near 40 if this weren't occurring). I'm presuming you're getting
prepared
to make another PWC, if only to reduce the Nitrate a bit. The other
parameters don't look too bad that they'd cause much stress yet. Your
Free-Ammonia test will show you how well the Prime is working, but you still
need to
keep the relatively non-toxic Ammonium down below levels that can still
stress the fish.

Ray</HTML>

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]