QT help

[Leandre]

hi guys,
so, the tank has been cycling for a month and all seems well, i decided to setup a qt using tank water.
it has a large sponge filter thats been sitting in the sump from the beginning and a cannister filter. inside the cannister is just filter floss for keep detritus from the tank. a heater and a digital temp probe

Ammonia: 0.00
Nitrite: 0.00
Nitrate: 10.0
PH 8.0
SG: 1.020
Temp: 82f
all done with API test kits

yesterday i bought a yellow tail tamarin wrasse. it was swimming well and eating mysis. i dripped acclimated the fish for about 40 mins then temp floated it for 30mins. drained the water and added the fish, kept the lights low and left him for a few hours. tried feeding him some pellets, he was eating them then spitting them out, so i gave some mysis, which he ate. dimmed the lights for a few hours then turned them off for the night.

this morning i noticed he was hovering around the top gasping for air. so i started testing,

Ammonia: 0.00
Nitrite: 0.25
Nitrate: 15.0
PH 7.4
SG: 1.020
Temp 82f

and did a 50% water change prier to writing this (3pm PST) gonna see if anything change and added a medium sized airstone

is this normal? if not what im i doing wrong? i was told to keep the SG lower and temp higher to speed up the life cycle of the pest (if any). im going to use copper then prazi. but for now i want to monitor it and make sure its eating first before i add any chems, does this seem right?

thanks again guys

 

[DaveK]

What's going on is that your seeing a tank go through it's normal cycle. Tank water itself has very little in the way of bacteria, so when you set up a tank using it, there was very little bacteria to start with and no source of food for it. Once you added the fish and food, you started the cycle.

Depending upon your point of view, you may not have done anything wrong. Some people use a bare tank for quarantining fish and keep the ammonia down using water changes. This is the method ypu more or less selected by default, and it's not really wrong, just a lot to keep up with. While your doing this, feed very very little. That way there are less waste products to deal with.

Other people want a cycled quarantine tank, so to do that, you usually add a raw grocery store shrimp to the thnk and let it rot. That provides a source of ammonia and the bacteria will break it down.

 

[Leandre]

there's a massive sponge filter thats been in the sump for about a month now, that alone should have some bacteria on it? also forgot to mention, i also threw in some macrobator7 from Brightwell, too aid what bacteria is already on the sponge

the main DT is either cycled or very close to the end of cycle, hence why i started the QT, i used macrobactor7 and Dr Tim's ammonia to cycle