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Trials and tribulations

I am on the verge of tears here and losing my mind. Last night the aquarium tested free of Nitrite (and Ammonia), the same this morning, so I was elated and thought I was finally out of the woods, however then I tested again just now and two brands of tests agree that there is more Nitrite in than ever. 0.6-0.8 ppm!!! Seriously lethal amounts! I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and don't get why it keeps coming and going!
Might it have something to do with my fertilizer? I dose quite a lot of Tropica Specialised Nutrition (6 ml daily. Think I might have forgotten it yesterday, so that would match up with the Nitrite not showing up last night).
I've also gotten a lot of green dust algae suddenly.
 
I am starting to think I might be onto something, with the overdosed fertiliser! The fertiliser has Ammonium in it. Can that be turned into Nitrite? And then this young aquarium can't keep up with converting it to Nitrate. It would explain why the Nitrite problem is coming and going.
I've been overdosing the fertiliser because there continued to be very little Nitrate in the water.
 
Hi all,
LadyDay said:
The fertiliser has Ammonium in it. Can that be turned into Nitrite?
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Not only can, but will be (I'll ignore <"COMAMMOX Nitrospira"> for the moment).
LadyDay said:
I've been overdosing the fertiliser because there continued to be very little Nitrate in the water.
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That sounds likely. If you have plenty of plants and oxygen the elevated levels of TAN (NH3/NH4+) and nitrite (NO2-) will be extremely transitory. <"Tropica Specialised causing Nitrite spikes - false positive or genuine concern??">
Conceptual-diagram-of-the-role-of-nitrification-on-the-nitrogen-N-cycle-in-lakes.png

cheers Darrel
 
@dw1305 Wow, it is SO GOOD to finally have an answer to the mystery! And it's easily solved. Thank you so much for the help. I assume I can use another not-ammonium-based fertiliser that has macro nutrients? I can find one that has KNO3 as source of Nitrate instead. I imagine with the amount of plants I have and with CO2, it won't be enough to use a fertiliser with just micro nutrients...?
 
Hi.
I’m pretty sure that’s a lot of fertiliser.
For a 100ltr tank it is 10ml per WEEK.

Sure someone will have a bit more advice on this in a moment!

Take care.
Simon
 
si walker said:
Hi.
I’m pretty sure that’s a lot of fertiliser.
For a 100ltr tank it is 10ml per WEEK.

Sure someone will have a bit more advice on this in a moment!

Take care.
Simon
Click to expand...
I think I've definitely made a mistake. I was told to use enough untill Nitrate hit 25 ppm, I haven't made it near that much Nitrate, and they said that Tropica wildly understates how much is needed for a tank with any significant amount of plants. And with the EI it's-never-too-much confusion. All in all, I got it wrong.
 
Well you are learning then and that's a really good thing!
If it was easy we wouldn't be here.
I'm number blind and have to sit in total silence with a calculator to work it all out, then I go old school pen and paper.
I think that the dosing information on the bottle is terrible.
I have always dosed daily with a syringe to get my exact amount. The Tropica bottle says a pump = ??. I don't trust that at all.
Trust issues. Number blind. Whatever next!
Enjoy what you got.
 
si walker said:
I’m pretty sure that’s a lot of fertiliser
Click to expand...
Yes dosing 6ml daily in a 80L tank would give you 1ppm N daily, half of this would be from ammonium. Certainly enough give give a reading for nitrite in a immature tank full of fresh aqua soil.

@LadyDay stop dosing the Tropica for a couple of days and see if the nitrite readings taper off, if they do then try dosing 2ml daily to see if this prevents the nitrite spike re appearance.

Dosing Tropica can be done safely, just needs to be done with open eyes and carefully.
 
si walker said:
Well you are learning then and that's a really good thing!
If it was easy we wouldn't be here.
I'm number blind and have to sit in total silence with a calculator to work it all out, then I go old school pen and paper.
I think that the dosing information on the bottle is terrible.
I have always dosed daily with a syringe to get my exact amount. The Tropica bottle says a pump = ??. I don't trust that at all.
Trust issues. Number blind. Whatever next!
Enjoy what you got.
Click to expand...
Learning is half the fun when it comes to aquariums, but can also be a source of frustration in cases like this. I guess we're all bound to make some blunders while gaining experience. Fertilisation seemss particularly complicated to me!
 
John q said:
Yes dosing 6ml daily in a 80L tank would give you 1ppm N daily, half of this would be from ammonium. Certainly enough give give a reading for nitrite in a immature tank full of fresh aqua soil.

@LadyDay stop dosing the Tropica for a couple of days and see if the nitrite readings taper off, if they do then try dosing 2ml daily to see if this prevents the nitrite spike re appearance.

Dosing Tropica can be done safely, just needs to be done with open eyes and carefully.
Click to expand...
I guess sometimes experience comes the hard way. I will proceed as you advice. I am considering switching fertiliser to a "safer one", but it would of course be nice to finish this bottle.
 
LadyDay said:
Yes. Explanation why is in post #26. 🙂
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At least now you have a plausible reason for your elevated nitrite reading. Do as @John q suggests for a few days and see if the readings return to acceptable levels. I think you can finished the bottle and then change to a different fertiliser. If you have lots of plants and use CO2 you will need a fertiliser that provides NPK (macros).
 
hypnogogia said:
At least now you have a plausible reason for your elevated nitrite reading. Do as @John q suggests for a few days and see if the readings return to acceptable levels. I think you can finished the bottle and then change to a different fertiliser. If you have lots of plants and use CO2 you will need a fertiliser that provides NPK (macros).
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Yes, it's a huge relief to finally know what was going on! I will follow the advice of both of you and I'm optimistic that that will solve the Nitrite problem.
I will make sure to get a fertilizer with macros.
 
LadyDay said:
In an emergency situation with a really big Nitrite spike it would likely take a huge amount of H2O2 to fully get rid of the Nitrite.
@_Maq_ What do you think?
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Quite possibly. And maybe it just would take a bit longer to wait, twelve hours, perhaps?
Andy Pierce said:
This is not a conclusion you can be confident about. I suspect that what is actually happening here is that the peroxide in high doses is oxidising and thereby destroying the chromogen (dye) used to indicate the presence of nitrite.
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I think this is quite possible, too. If that is the case, hydrogen peroxide should be able to remove all the dye, i.e. make the sample crystal clear.
LadyDay said:
Yes, it's a huge relief to finally know what was going on! I will follow the advice of both of you and I'm optimistic that that will solve the Nitrite problem.
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No, the problem is not solved, yet. Mind you, many hobbyists use ammonium for fertilizing without issues, and every fish food contains organically bound reduced nitrogen (a precursor to ammonia). The sad fact remains that nitrification in your tank does not work as it should.
 
_Maq_ said:
I think this is quite possible, too. If that is the case, hydrogen peroxide should be able to remove all the dye, i.e. make the sample crystal clear.
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I agree you might clear all the dye with sufficient peroxide. Back to the nitrite question, the other possibility with peroxide is a reaction with nitrite to form peroxynitrite (Peroxynitrite - Wikipedia) which whilst it isn't nitrite anymore isn't anything you'd want to have around in your either (you'd probably be better off having the nitrite). For me that is yet another reason not to dose peroxide into your tank; see also other peroxide aquarium horror stories.
 
I will have to agree with Andy one this one, and such practices should not be recommended as a mean to resolve nitrite issues. This comes back to suggesting to members to experiment theories in their tanks that might not be practical and potentially dangerous.
 
_Maq_ said:
No, the problem is not solved, yet. Mind you, many hobbyists use ammonium for fertilizing without issues, and every fish food contains organically bound reduced nitrogen (a precursor to ammonia). The sad fact remains that nitrification in your tank does not work as it should.
Click to expand...
Seriously? Oh no. And it's not because I was pouring in too much for it to keep up, but it otherwise working fine (just new still)? The water continues to test free of Nitrite today, whereas yesterday, and every other day except the day I forgot fertiliser, the content skyrocketed. But what you're saying is that the system should be able to process even that large a quantity of Ammonium all the way to Nitrate by now if it was working as it should? Even though it's only been 5 weeks (yesterday to be exact)?
I don't know how to handle this news. Is the tank doomed or is it just a case of waiting for it to start working?
@dw1305 do you agree with @_Maq_ that nitrification is still not working as it should in my tank?
 
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LondonDragon said:
I will have to agree with Andy one this one, and such practices should not be recommended as a mean to resolve nitrite issues. This comes back to suggesting to members to experiment theories in their tanks that might not be practical and potentially dangerous.
Click to expand...
Andy Pierce said:
For me that is yet another reason not to dose peroxide into your tank
Click to expand...

I haven't considered using hydrogen peroxide to resolve the issue, it sounds dangerous even though I know it's used to spot treat algae, but others might try it, so it's good to have the discussion.
 
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