What am I doing wrong??

[Kindredspirit]

Hi Marie:

The amount of thought and effort you put in most ppl don't even come close and that's why ur fish are doing fine and also why u get so much ADVISE

HTH
Sandeep

You hope this helps?


Sandeep, More Than You Could Possibly Know~

What you said, just made my day and the morning didnt start off too well~



Thank You~

Marie~


and yes, all 16 discus are perfectly happy living in England!

[Dissident]

One word of warning with regards to the information provided by local water departments. Treatment methods vary according to seasonal changes in the source water, periodical maintenance of equipment, as well as through changes in technology. It is important to test tap water periodically, as levels of chlorine/chloramine, phosphate, nitrate, ph, etc can and do change.

Dissident - I am not trying to be disrespectful, but I am curious who provided the information that Milwaukee stopped using chlorine. I lived in Milwaukee for 35 years (20 as a fish hobbiest). I had heard that they added ozone as a primary disinfectant, but believe they still use chlorine also. There website indicates that "The chlorine system is used to provide the necessary chloramine residual in finished water. It is also available as a backup primary disinfectant to ozone."
http://www.mpw.net/Pages/WaterWorks.html#treatment

This is also indicated in the finished water quality analysis "Chlorine residual = .75mg/L"
http://www.mpw.net/Pages/water/docs/2005GP.pdf

I should have been more spacific, they stoped using chlorine as their _primary_ disfectant. Much better then chlorine/chloramine (chloramine is some nasty stuff for fish-keepers). In water treatments that use chlorine 10ppm has to be maintained to kill some bacteria, not that you get 10ppm out of the tap in those places, i would sure hope not at least Yes chlorine is used as a secondary disfectant.

"Ozone replaced chlorine as the primary disinfectant when ozone systems were installed at both plants in 1998. Ozone destroys illness-causing microorganisms, controls taste and odor, and reduces chlorinated disinfection byproducts. With ozone in place, the Water Works is poised to comply with upcoming stringent regulations. Ozone is applied to raw water before coagulation. The ozonated water then follows the conventional treatment train of coagulation, sedimentation and filtration."

From link provided and as you stated, didn't mean to cause any confusion, and no dissrespect taken

[ronrca]

It seems intuitive that different fish have developed different processes (metabolic or not) to deal with the different conditions that they find themselves in don't you think? What I don't understand, nor did I understand it from the link you posted, is why an increase in salt helps relieve osmotic stress of the fish. That would imply that they are constantly under some kind of stress just existing and would be better suited to water conditions with more salt, whereas marine fish would be better suited to water with less salt. It doesn't make sense. What does make sense is that the fish are perfectly suited to the type of water they are in and adding salt can only irritate them and throw off their normal systems of coping.

I've never had problems adding salt to my tanks, but I've only done it when the fish seem to have skin irritations of some sort. I don't know how I would recognize a need for osmotic regulation, how I would know if salt was working and how I would know when I could stop adding salt. Nor do I understand why we would add uniodized table salt rather then marine salt. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I find the evidence insufficient to make the kind of claims being made.

Rather than contining here, I responded in the 'Water hardness and how is affects fish' thread!

http://forum.simplydiscus.com//showthread.php?t=46034

Marie,
The readings look good so far. Continue to measure them daily and continue with your wc's. It should clear up soon.

[Kindredspirit]

Thanks Ron!

[Timbo]

I'm a little late in the game but there might be other posters that read this after having a bacterial bloom so I thought it was worth jumping in...

It is not at all unnatural for your nitrate level to read 0. It doesn't necessarily mean your filter is uncycled. Over the years I have many tanks that never registered nitrates. One likely reason is because I changed a lot of water daily. Another might be the stocking density & feeding regimen. But the point is that 0 nitrates does not, in of itself, mean your filter is uncycled. Especially when you previously had a nitrate reading of 10. That does mean that your filter is doing something as there would never be nitrates in a completely uncycled filter.

Another point I wanted to make was the nitrite reading drop from 10 to 0 isn't unnatural either... part of it depends on the exact moment the readings were taken, before & after the w/c. If the nitrite & nitrate readings were 10 prior to the w/c that indicates that your filter was working but could not keep up. Then you replace 50% of the water so the nitrites drop to 5. The filter is then capable of keeping up so the remaining nitrites are consumed and drop to zero. It could happen, though you would expect to see some nitrates.

As for the solution to this problem. If you have cycled media that's obviously the best way to go. Failing that I would do daily 50% w/c, which most Discus keepers on this forum are recommended to do regardless. That would probably keep the levels low enough right there given that the filter is working to a degree. I see no advantage at all of using salt. Many talk about how it aids in osmotic regulation but I've never seen evidence of that. And Prime is an excellent bandaid to get you through this stage. I've had good success with it in the past and have never seen a negative with using it. While it certainly is a bandaid the only real solution to the problem is TIME and a bandaid that buys you time is exactly what you need.

excellent advice there!