QT tank showing Nitrites

Leyth · Jul 10, 2016

Hey guys, I have a DT that is cycled with some corals and inverts in it. I bought two snowflake clowns and put them in a QT a week ago. Everything went well all week, except today I noticed Nitrites are .25 ppm in the QT.

The tank is completely bare, using RO/Di and running Aquaclear 20 on it with biomax and filter floss only.

The fish are doing well, I have been doing 10-20% water changes every few days and siphoning any detritus/food crumbs from the tank. Anyting I should do?

Duke4Life · Jul 10, 2016

Sounds like an uncycled qt and if so get 1 of those bacteria's in a bottle and use that to help seed. Are you using any type of meds?

Humblefish has some great stuff on the disease section.

Leyth · Jul 10, 2016

Hey, yea it's uncycled, I thought a QT isn't supposed to be cycled. I did use the water from my cycled tank to start it off, maybe that helped?

joro · Jul 10, 2016

I actually had the same issue with new QT tanks and I used a combo of cycled tank water and Bio-Spira to get it going. I've had fish in it now for over 1 month with even much higher Nitrites and haven't seen an issues as long as the Ammonia was staying down within reason. Here's my original thread if it helps, some good info in there!

Duke4Life · Jul 10, 2016

Leyth said:
Hey, yea it's uncycled, I thought a QT isn't supposed to be cycled. I did use the water from my cycled tank to start it off, maybe that helped?

That would help a bit. In my experience if you know your going to get something it's a bit easier having 1 cycled as you don't have the worries you do now (monitoring ammonia and nitrites). I'd add some prime, bacteria. and continue monitoring, doing water changes when necessary.

Humblefish · Jul 10, 2016

Your Aquaclear 20 should have come with a sponge. That and the biomax are ideal for colonizing live nitrifying bacteria to help break down ammonia. You just need to add some bacteria to get it going, such as Bio-Spira, Seachem Stability or Dr Tim's Nitrifying Bacteria.

Leyth · Jul 10, 2016

joro said:
I actually had the same issue with new QT tanks and I used a combo of cycled tank water and Bio-Spira to get it going. I've had fish in it now for over 1 month with even much higher Nitrites and haven't seen an issues as long as the Ammonia was staying down within reason. Here's my original thread if it helps, some good info in there!

Just read that thread, that's crazy that you saw it go up to 5ppm! I guess I will just continue monitoring.

Thanks everyone for the replies. I am going to make a decision on whether or not to add a bacterial supplement based on the monitoring I do for the next day or two.

joro · Jul 10, 2016

Leyth said:
Just read that thread, that's crazy that you saw it go up to 5ppm! I guess I will just continue monitoring.

I was certainly freaking out thinking everything was going to pass but everyone did great and are now healthy as ever - probably another 2 weeks out from DT once Copper treatment is complete. One article that I also found when I was going through this was one written by Randy in fact for Reefkeeping Magazine and the results were quite startling. Clownfish for example, can get to about 344ppm before LC50 (which means about half of the test subjects die at this point) and while none of us will likely ever get close to that, it did put my 5ppm in perspective

Good luck!

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jul 12, 2016

Nitrite is not toxic in seawater, unlike freshwater.

I would not do anything about possible elevated nitrate.
As long as you have low ammonia, fish will be fine.