water parameters out of control...

[newb]

there is no such thing as over filtration

[mark razmandi]

lol i could tell when i saw all the filtration you had on your tanks HAHAA

[newb]

small bump in the road for ya...believe me I have had some bumps as well. learn from your own mistakes...or read the mistakes of others and save yourself the hassle!!!

[mark razmandi]

well maybe i should hold off on the W/D until i get my bigger tank then??? should i stick to two canisters and two HOBs? im gonna fix this tomorrow for sure

[supadave]

ok well my brain is officially melted with shame of completely screwing up my aquarium....can someone do me a favor and make me a list like this

ALL THE THINGS I DID WRONG
.Cleaned the existing filter in tap water.
Always clean your filters in tank water. Tap water contains chlorine and chloramines that will kill your bacteria.
. Too many new additions to tank.
I'm not sure how many fish you added but if you added more fish than your bio filtering can handle... then your ammonia will spike. This may not have been a problem if you had not killed the bacteria.
.


WHAT I NEED OT DO TO FIX IT
.(check my earlier post)
.
.

WHAT FILTRATION I SHOULD GET
Your filtration is fine. You don't just have to have a wet/dry. A cheaper alternative would be to load one or booth of the Rena XP3 with more bio media. (I have two XP3s' setup on a 110 gal tank which houses 40+ Tropheus, 1 Tawain Reef Hap, 7 Demasoni, 1 - 7" Moshi Petro. In each filter I have added about a liter of Seachem Matrix bio media. This tank has been on auto-pilot for over a year...no problems what so ever.)

(note: 2L of Seachem Matrix is about $20 online.)
.
.

and anything else

Don't worry too much. You are not the first person to do this... and something tells me that you won't be the last.

[mark razmandi]

k, ill take care of this as soon as i wake up

[mark razmandi]

Thanks everyone!!! Yall are the best

[Mzungu]

Did you test your tap water for nitrites/nitrates?

[mark razmandi]

my tap water is 0 across the board and 7.8-8.0 ph.....i fixed it all today...my tank is back in running order....im getting a couple HOBs from some of my other tanks at school

[Mzungu]

Okay, cool. Just checking. Sometimes tap water will have nitrites/nitrates, and that can really be frustrating. :)

Also, like supadave said, in the future be sure to clean your filter media in tank water. When I do this, I simply empty out some tank water into a 5g bucket and clean the media in there.

[mark razmandi]

yea, the ironic thing is when i was cleaning my filter the other day, i thought to myself "hmmm wouldnt the chlorine kill all my bacteria?" "oh well" lol dumb dumb dumb dumb

[Mzungu]

Hey, the good thing is your fish are still alive, right?

Just keep testing the water to make sure the ammonia or nitrites/nitrates aren't rising, and if they are, do water changes accordingly. Doing water changes might slow down the cycling, but it will help your fish if the levels are really high.

[supadave]

I'm glad everything worked out for you ...Mark.:emt_thumbs::emt_thumbs:

[mark razmandi]

thanks guys, couldnt have done it without yall....i was TERRIFIED this morning because all my other fish seemed to be doing alright but my 6in loach was on his side and my eel had buried himself in the sand and was breathing extremely hard....everyone is back to normal now i sure did dodge a bullet...i have like 500$ of fish in there

[geoff_tropheus]

Test for Nitrite every day.

If you cannot get a cycled filter, use Marineland's Bio Spira. Fish Ranch sells it and I am sure others do to.

It will cycle your tank overnight no problem.

Just be careful, and take it easy on feeding for next week or so.