Tag Archives: nitrite

Our freshwater aquarium 30.10.2010 – Or how I made my freshwater aquarium beautiful.

Posted by on October 30, 2010 No comments

Below in an image of our aquarium taken 30.10.2010.

Our freshwater aquarium - 30.10.2010At least to me the aquarium looks more or less like an aquarium I would like to have. Recently I have been more focusing on good plant growth since to me that is the basic for any good and beautiful aquarium. Good plant growth without algae shows immediately that the aquarium is healthy and to me at least showing nice looking, healthy plants is to show that I keep good care of my aquarium in the long run. Anyone can drop in a few fish and buy some plastic boats that will spit air bubbles, but having healthy plants requires some effort.

I have also had some troubles with the fish in the past, especially in the beginning of our new tank. I had some issues with the N-cycle but it is looking all better now. I haven’t changed the water in three weeks and my readings look good: pH: 7.0, NO2: <0.025 ppm and NO3: 10 ppm. To add to this, we are also having guppy babies in the tank. We got five of them and they are all still alive. They are now two weeks old and about 1-1.5cm long and it looks very promising for them to reach full growth. People say that this is not a big deal for guppies as they give birth so often, but to me this tells that my aquarium is healthy!
Especially people that are new to aquariums and getting their first tank, I think they start wondering shortly how they can achieve these results and a healthy looking aquarium. I will give you my advice below so you don’t need to wonder what are the secret to have a good looking aquarium. Read more »

JBL test shows false high nitrite level

Posted by on October 17, 2010 1 comment

What would you do if you get a nitrite test result showing your nitrite levels are at 0.8-1.0 ppm? At least I would panic at first. Just take a look at the picture below and you see what I mean.JBL Nitrite test shows false positive

The result to the left is the one I got from my first sample and it got me panicking for a brief moment. It shows a nitrite test result as high as 1.0 ppm which basically means that my fish are about to die. At this point I was still wondering how this could have happened since only a while ago the results were fine. What could have happened?

Then I thought I better take another test just to verify the reading. That result is in the middle in the picture above. As you can see it looks normal. I confirmed this by measuring the nitrit level a third time and you can see the result of that one on the right. This also showed normal. What had happened? All of the tests above were taken withing 5 minutes of each other.

Well, when I took the first test for nitrite I also took a test for nitrate. I had the both test bottles in the same hand shaking them violently to have them mixed well. This is what the instructions for the JBL nitrate test says I should do – but the nitrite test does not say I should do this. Apparently if you shake the test bottle of JBL nitrite test too much, you will get a false positive reading as a result. I never thought that shaking the test bottle would cause any harm – I mean it was not explicitly forbidden or anything. But apparently you shouldn’t do that. Only gently see that the two different liquids you dropped into the water are mixed and leave it alone for three minutes.

Vacuum the gravel or not when changing water

Posted by on October 9, 2010 No comments

I stumbled upon a great article on aquarium water change by americanaquariumproducts.com (Yes, they want to sell you stuff, but they also have some lengthy and detailed articles): http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_cleaning.html. The article goes into great detail on how you should clean the aquarium and change the water. One thing that caught by eye was the bit about vacuuming the gravel and the bacteria living in it:

Contrary to some information thrown around without much research, vacuuming the layers of gravel that contain aerobic (nitrifying) bacteria will NOT destroy the bacterial colonies as research (that really is not that new) has shown these bacteria to secrete a glue like substance to the media they cling to and a gravel vacuum will NOT dislodge these bacteria.

I too had heard about this, from my local aquarium dealer I guess. Also the book by Mr. Markku Varjo talks about the good bacteria living the gravel and that you should be careful not to vacuum too much and too often. I guess this again shows the point that there are as many advice on aquarium maintenance as there are people giving them 😉 In any case, last week when I did change the water, I followed the old advice and didn’t vacuum the gravel too much. So today I measured the nitrite levels and they were up, although I’ve done all I can to avoid nitrite (not feed fish too much, take care of the plants…).I think the elevated nitrate levels are related to my too careful vacuuming of the gravel because there was really a lot of feces in the bottom of the tank.

So I think what American Aquarium Products talks about makes sense and vacuuming the gravel from all loose material is important. You will not loose the good bacteria when vacuuming and by vacuuming the gravel the excess dirt is removed and you will have lower nitrite levels. I cannot imagine leaving the feces there can be good for anything. And as long as you don’t clean your water pump at the same time, there will be enough good bacteria in the tank anyway.