water parameters and conditioner questions

[prhelp]

So I took a trip to my LFS today, with samples of both my tap water and my tank water. I had no particular concern -- I just wanted the info for record-keeping purposes.

pH: Out of the tap, 7.6. In the tank, 6.6. The explanation was that, most likely, my large piece of driftwood was bringing the pH down.

Ammonia: Actually had a reading of 1.0 in the tank, why surprised me.

Nitrite: 0.

Nitrate: 0.

The above state of affairs has me worried that I'm starting a mini-cycle, six months after the tank has been set up.

Here's info you need to know, however:

Recently been using Algone to attempt to assist with an algae problem, to supposedly lower levels of nitrite and nitrate, clean the water, etc.

Recently, also, changed my water-change strategy, moving from about 25 - 40 percent per week to about 15 percent per week, for a variety of reasons.

I use an AquaClear 50 with the carbon pack, added floss, and now the Algone packet -- very small.

The water looks fantastic. The fish are happier than I've ever seen fish. Appetites good, behavior very active, no oddities at all.

I have questions like:

Do you think my recent water cleanliness efforts have been overzealous?
I want to use less chemicals in my tank overall -- currently, I'm using Amquel Plus and Novaqua Plus when I treat water -- is that too much? Could I drop both and just use Seachem Prime instead?
Given what you know now, do you think the Ammonia reading is a false positive?
Should nitrates actually be at zero? I got the water test results today (Saturday). Last WC was 15 percent on Wednesday evening.

I want to run this live planted tank as naturally as possible. That means, as few chemicals as possible. I'd like to lose the carbon pack in the filter and simply add more floss, and have everything "sit lower" in the filter water. I'd bought and sold on the idea of small (15 percentish) frequent water changes -- I can explain that, if you're interested.

So, can anyone comment on the water parameters and my questions about chems and readings?

Thank you in advance.

 

[prhelp]

Let me clarify my question about "should nitrates be at zero." I think, ideally, they should be as close to zero as possible. However, the supposed presence of ammonia and lack of anything else concerns me. I will obviously keep a close eye on the ammonia readings. I already own/use an API master test kit, but I occasionally take my water into the LFS to get their readings of my water and learn the best techniques for reading it.

This is all complicated by the concern I have the the Amquel and Novaqua+ are just "hiding" real problems. I don't want to hide problems -- I want to address them the right way, with as few as chemicals as possible.

 

[prhelp]

Sorry, last item:

GH: Less than 1
KH: Less than 1

 

[Kiara1125]

Well, my nitrates (got everything checked yesterday) were zero, along with nitrites and ammonia. My fish are fine and I even have fry in the tank. I just don't know what happened, only my last water change was 10 days ago. I don't know if I have some rockin beneficial bacteria or what.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; I cannot comment on the water conditioning chemicals as I do not use any of them. I am fortunate enough at my current place to have tap water to which the only chemical of concern added is chlorine. I age my water in containers before water changes. I have not used any chemical water conditioners for over five decades. The point of my post is that it is possible. One caution is that some water companies add chemicals other than chlorine and if so you will need to use something to bind them.
I do not normally treat algae with chemicals. I keep snails in my tank which are also stocked with live plants. I have had a couple of outbreaks of the sheet algae (cyaniobacter??) which has a bacteria associated with it. I treated this with eryhtromicin (sp) antibiotics. I scrape the regular algae from the front panel of glasss and leave the rest alone as it is a natural part of freshwater tanks. I have no idea what the algone can do to water parameters, but all treatments have side effects of some sort.
If you are new to the hobby, the large assortment of foods, chemicals and accessories in a fish shop can be overwhelming. They create the impression that you must have all this stuff to keep a healthy tank. I have learned to be selective and find that I do not need much of the stuff. Keep in mind that they are stocked with stuff from big companies whose main goal is to sell you something. I was told an old saw about the job of a fishing lure being to catch a fisherman, not nesessarily a fish. I have a couple of tackle boxes of success lures, the majority of which have never caught a fish.
I have often wondered if folks that represent the business side aquarium hobby are active on the fish forums I visit. I do know that I am often thoroughly rebuked in posts when I post that the chemicals can largely be avoided.
One last thought. Some live in areas where the water is bad and probably should not be used by people or in aquariums. There are ways around bad water, but they are often expensive or a lot of extra trouble. When I was a boy there were a few places where the water in a stream could be drunk, now there are none that I know of anywhere. We have been steadily lowering the quality of our freshwater. A less than encouraging remark. A visual aid used many times is to hold a baseball and put one drop from an eyedropper onto it. That one drop represents, in scale, the amout of good fresh water we had at one point. Water is more precious that gold or oil and we have been messing with it for a long time. I lived in an area where all of our wells were contaminated by the chemicals used in the process of cleaning mine motors. Long before it became public I saw the spot next to the Cumberland River where the old chemical was dumped. We had to stop using the wells and water lines were run to the area. The dumping went on for years before the company was shut down. Please disregard these last comments.
Good luck

 

[Lotus]

The ammonia reading is of concern. Is it possible you had a fish die recently or stirred up the gravel? If you're using Amquel, it neutralizes ammonia (by turnning it to ammonium), but it will still give a reading with a liquid test kit. One other thing to consider is that if your local water treatment plant uses chloramines to treat the water, you will have ammonia when you use a water conditioner. It breaks the chloramine bond and releases ammonia. A water conditioner that neutralizes ammonia will convert this into ammonium (harmless to fish), but still give you a reading when you test it.

The pH in your tank will likely be unstable as you have soft water (KH 1). So, the driftwood will cause your pH to bounce around somewhat. You could add a buffer, but it's probably not necessary.

My advice would be to check with your water company to find out what they use to treat (you can sometimes look this up online). If they use chloramines, you will need to use a water conditioner that neutralizes them. Seachem Prime does this. If you have only simple chlorine in your tapwater, you only need to use a simple dechlorinator.

Personally, if I had your tank, I'd do more than 15 percent per week. You have quite a few fish in there, and I think your tank would benefit from slightly larger water changes. Even if nitrates are at zero, there are still plenty of substances in the water from the fish (hormones, amino acids, etc.) that we're unable to measure.

 

[OrangeCones]

Wrong thread.

 

[Kayleigh750]

I've been sweating an ammonia reading of 1.0 for almost 6 weeks in my tank, just to figure out that it's actually like that because it comes out of the tap with that reading for whatever reason. I use seachem prime and I recently purchased the reader that goes into the tank to read free ammonia, which is zero. My water is crystal clear and the fish are perfectly happy. Now, I test my water with a liquid test kit and the nitrate test always comes up with a colour that that is anywhere in the range of 0-5, somewhere in the middle. If your lfs tested it they may have said it was zero because the colour was not quite at the 5 ppm mark yet. So, if your fish seem perfectly happy and there is no unnatural cloudiness to your water, then I wouldn't worry too much about these readings.

 

[prhelp]

OC -- "Wrong thread?" Who were you talking to? Thx.