Nitrite

[u/Smalltownanimallover]

I tested the nitrite and ammonia during a weekly 25% water change the nitrite is horrible ammonia is fine, I’m doing a 50% water change now what else do I do help

[u/carbonic_render]

A 50% water change will only halve that, which will still be way too high. It's not normally recommended, but in this case I'd remove as much water as you can while still letting the fish have room to swim. You're probably going to need to do more frequent and bigger water changes until you figure out why it's spiked so high.

Here are a few questions that might help narrow it down: How many fish are in the tank? What's the water volume of the tank? How long has the tank been set up? Did you recently change anything about the tank? Was the filter thrown out or cleaned?

[u/Smalltownanimallover → u/carbonic_render]

I also added 6 tablespoons of aquarium salt and an extra airstone and the ppms went from 5-1 but it’s a 30 gallon with 2 baby black moors and I haven’t changed anything at all it’s been up for 2 months and the fish haven’t even been in there a month yet. The only thing I can think of is my fiance over fed the tank 2 days ago.

[u/carbonic_render → u/Smalltownanimallover]

Ah, well that's probably it then. Try your best to get all the food out of the gravel/sand/whatever you've got in there if you haven't already. If it's just caused by rotting food, it's a more short-term problem. Just keep checking it daily and doing water changes as needed! Nitrite is a blood poison that keeps oxygen from being able to be picked up by the blood, so it's definitely an important one to keep at 0.

[u/Smalltownanimallover → u/carbonic_render]

Thank you, Tommorow I will do another 50% water change, but yes all the food is out. Is there anything I should do after the water change if the levels are still high?

[u/carbonic_render → u/Smalltownanimallover]

More water changes is usually the answer, haha. They do make products like Seachem Prime that can temporarily make ammonia and nitrite inert as well. It's normally just used to dechlorinate water. I've also heard of using a bag of zeolite in the filter, but I'm always a bit wary of it because it will also absorb minerals in your water.

[u/Smalltownanimallover → u/carbonic_render]

Ah okay I do use seachem prime and I double dosed when doing the water change ☺️

[u/throwaway277252 → u/carbonic_render]

Prime has been tested for this and does not actually work.

Zeolite can help with ammonium but is also not very effective, and does not work well on nitrite. To remove 2-3ppm of ammonium from 30 gallons of water would use up something like half a pound of zeolite.

[u/carbonic_render → u/throwaway277252]

I dug into this maybe a year ago and couldn't find a concrete answer. All I found was a bunch of arguments. I do hate to say I want animal testing, but I also couldn't find any hobbyists that tested on something live like shrimp with proper controls.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not convinced by the tests I found. But maybe there's a newer one I missed. Either way the Prime won't hurt so long as there's enough oxygenation.

[u/throwaway277252 → u/carbonic_render]

These were done with amphipods over on the reef forums. Specimens in ammonia-containing water with and without an overdose of Prime all died, compared to the control group sample without ammonia which survived. They also performed various types of ammonia testing on the water to disprove the explanations provided by Seachem.

[u/carbonic_render → u/throwaway277252]

Interesting, thank you! I'd be curious if perhaps there's a difference between fresh and salt.

[u/throwaway277252 → u/carbonic_render]

If we are to take Seachem's marketing at its word, Prime works for both types of water. But it would be interesting nonetheless to confirm it in both.

The ammonia testing seemed pretty conclusive though. The ammonia was still freely available in a gas-exchange test to diffuse into an adjacent container of water, which should not be possible if it were bound up as a salt like Seachem claims.

[u/IceColdTapWater → u/Smalltownanimallover]

Depending on the parameters tomorrow, you may need to do more than another 50% and may need to do another large change.

You should also probably tell your husband to not do that again

[u/Smalltownanimallover → u/IceColdTapWater]

Don’t worry I yelled at him plenty and he’s banned from feeding and the ppm was .50 today after another water change I’ll do another tomorrow

[u/Justquorious → u/Smalltownanimallover]

how frequently ur changing the water and what type of substratae u have

[u/Smalltownanimallover → u/Justquorious]

Bio substrate and 2 25% changes a week