Hi everyone,
I have a 20H. I changed from aquarium gravel to blasting sand. I hated the look of the gravel and wanted something easier to root in for my plants.
My tank has:
4 Danio
4 Platy
20 cherry shrimp
10 amano shrimp
3 nerite snails
It is heavily planted. It has 2 HOB filters (a whisper 20 and an AC70). I dose EI and inject CO2.
My kH is 7, my gH is 9, temp 75, TDS 330. pH before CO2 turns on is 7.6, after CO2 is on it runs around 6.4. Nitrates are at 20ppm.
I changed the substrate on Wednesday night. I added back about 5 gallons of the old tank water, the rest was TDS matched new water. All hardscape was put back into the tank as well as all the plants. I added 1 small bottle of tetra safe start 24 hours later. On Thursday evening I had 0.25ppm ammonia and neg nitrite. On Friday morning my ammonia was up to 0.5ppm and nitrite neg. I added another medium bottle of TSS just to be sure if the first one failed. This morning, I have 0.5ppm (possibly approaching 1ppm) of ammonia and a slight change in nitrIte. Not quite purple yet, but not the normal negative color.
My fauna doesn't seem to care right now. I have not used any ammonia detoxifiers or ammonia binders per the TSS instructions. I do have Purigen both my filters.
My questions are:
1) Is there anything I can/need to do about this?
2) How long can I expect this to last?
3) What level of ammonia and nitrite should I intervene?
Thanks,
Ben
I have a 20H. I changed from aquarium gravel to blasting sand. I hated the look of the gravel and wanted something easier to root in for my plants.
My tank has:
4 Danio
4 Platy
20 cherry shrimp
10 amano shrimp
3 nerite snails
It is heavily planted. It has 2 HOB filters (a whisper 20 and an AC70). I dose EI and inject CO2.
My kH is 7, my gH is 9, temp 75, TDS 330. pH before CO2 turns on is 7.6, after CO2 is on it runs around 6.4. Nitrates are at 20ppm.
I changed the substrate on Wednesday night. I added back about 5 gallons of the old tank water, the rest was TDS matched new water. All hardscape was put back into the tank as well as all the plants. I added 1 small bottle of tetra safe start 24 hours later. On Thursday evening I had 0.25ppm ammonia and neg nitrite. On Friday morning my ammonia was up to 0.5ppm and nitrite neg. I added another medium bottle of TSS just to be sure if the first one failed. This morning, I have 0.5ppm (possibly approaching 1ppm) of ammonia and a slight change in nitrIte. Not quite purple yet, but not the normal negative color.
My fauna doesn't seem to care right now. I have not used any ammonia detoxifiers or ammonia binders per the TSS instructions. I do have Purigen both my filters.
My questions are:
1) Is there anything I can/need to do about this?
2) How long can I expect this to last?
3) What level of ammonia and nitrite should I intervene?
Thanks,
Ben