Tropical Fish Forums

[rsnprocess]

I bought these 2 fish for a community tank and was told they were badis badis. They were really aggressive to my neon tetras. I took them out and put them into an 8 gallon biocube with a bamboo shrimp and a hillstream loach that I had holding there until my 29 gallon was mature enough for them. Just in the last week I discovered that these little guys were lamprologus multifasiatus (multies or shellies).They don't belong in a community tank. So now when I can get the shrimp and the loach moved into the 29, I'm going to change the 8 gallon into a cichlid tank with sand and shells, since they are shell dwellers.I already put in a couple of shells and they've claimed them. They've also become little aggressive to the loach since I put in the shells. This could have been a mistake.

Question 1:I'm using Microbacter7 and Prime in the 29, which has been up and running for 4.5 week. It could be another week before the 29 gallon nitrites ate down to 0, should I take the shells out of the 8 gallon; would that reduce aggression from the multies?

Question 2: For this little future cichlid tanks anyone had any success putting anything in a small tank with shellies?

[diademhill]

Firstly,
Boost the 29 with some filter squeezings from your community tank which should speed up the cycle, Are you adding any food? Having looked up Microbacer7 I can't see any advantage over using a dead shrimp.

Why can't the shrimp & loach go in the community tank?

Sorry, in an 8 gallon tank you can't put anything with shellies .
The store should refund on them as they were misidentified.

[rsnprocess]

Sorry, I left out some information. My cycling 29 gallon has the following which I added slowly over the last 4.5 weeks:
2 honey gourami
3 x-ray pristella
5 neons

Today my nitrates are .25. So hopefully it won't be long before I can add the hillstream loach and the bamboo shrimp

[diademhill]

Nitrate or nitrites?

That is a harmful level if nitrites so do a water change asap.

If these had been Badis that level would have killed them quickly.

[rsnprocess]

Sorry, typo, My nitrites in the 29 gallon are .25. I did a water change. I'm still doing Prime and Microbacter7 daily. Another reason I did the water change was I'm trying to get my pH down closer to 7, even though I haven't had any bad ammonia readings.

Where the multies or shellies are now,in the 8 gallon biocube, all the levels are good. When I had the shellies in the 29, the levels were all good. I took them out because they were too aggressive to the neons.

I don't understand why my ammonia never spiked (at least my ammonia alert where never turned even close to green) in the 29 and yet all of a sudden at a month into the cycling, I have nitrite levels higher than they should be. Did the Microbacter7 speed up the ammonia turning to nitrites before the ammonia got high enough to even register?

Why is it that LFS people have such differing opinions on water changes during the cycling process and nitrites.?Two different guys (in two different stores) said not to do a water change, just continue the Microbacter7 and Prime. They said, "you have to let it run it's course, just feed sparingly" They said I'm probably toward the end of the cycling.

Yet, I know from my reading that water changes don't destroy the beneficial bacteria in the filter and in my filter, the bionodes.

This is really confusing to me

[diademhill]

The people in stores often don't care if you lose or damage fish during the cycling process:(
The ammonia alerts are not reliable and the only time you don't water change during a cycle is if you are doing a fishless cycle.
The bottled bacteria don't work - they don't have the correct bacteria to get the colonies growing so you are seeing the nitrite spike.

Leave the pH alone - a stable pH is safer for fish than changing levels.

Do a 20% daily water change - just add Prime to the new water - and do a second change if you see any nitrite reading.
Monitor the nitrates too. when you start to see these rise you are an the final stint.

What is the pH of a sample of tap water after 12 hours sat in a glass?

[rsnprocess]

My tap water's pH is 6.6 straight out of the tap; I'll do the 12 hour wait and let you know. I've been using RO water, which is 6.0.

I've read from multiply sources that ammonia is less toxic to fish when the pH is at 7.0 as opposed to 7.6.

[diademhill]

RO water should be pH 7.0


Ammonia is less toxic at lower pH but what are you adding to the RO water? It shouldn't be used neat.

[rsnprocess]

I have been use a little Alkaline buffer to bring it up form 6.0 to 7.0. Don't know why my RO water is 6.0. My Brita filtered water is 6.0 also.

[rsnprocess]

Tap water after 12 hours: went up from 6.6 to almost 7.0
So of course I did the same with RO water. It went up from 6.0 to 6.6
Why did this happen?