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Help needed urgent! Nitrate

1315 Views 7 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Diana
Hi, i just moved a few days a go and ones i have to empty my tank i dicide to put some jobe ferrilizer stick under my very old eco-complet.
When I put water on tank notice it have a white film on top of water, just on surface.
Did a mistake of don't test my water. Put the fishes in... Next morning half of my Angels was dead. So a separed the rest and test the water and my nitrate level is at 10ppm.
Make many Water changes but can't get ready from the white film on surface of water or lower my nitrate.
Can someone please help me.
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Is it 10ppm niTRITE? Because 10 nitrate is fine.
Option 1:
Take it all apart. Put the fish into a separate container in all new water. (plastic storage container with lid will work. Rinse the filter and media, then set it up to run on this bin.

Remove the substrate and the Jobes stakes. Rinse the substrate really well. Throw away the jobes stakes. Wipe down the sides of the tank. Clean everything else.

Reassemble it all except the fish and test the water. Is it clear enough? It may be a bit cloudy, but the white stuff on top is gone? Tests OK?

Put the fish back in.

Option 2:
Skim the water surface with any of several things that might pick up the white stuff. Try a good quality paper towel, a fine fish net, filter floss or other things.
Do a couple of 100% water changes, including VERY thorough gravel vacs and remove the Jobes spikes. Clean the filter media and add all the different filter media and water treatments that get rid of toxins:
Chelator such as EDTA (Bottle will say 'locks up heavy metals' or something similar)
Activated Carbon
Purigen
and things like Cuprisorb, Nitrasorb and any similar products.
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Did you lose your cycle when you knocked down the tank?
Have you checked your ammonia and nitrites? As I understand it, the Jobes fert sticks contain urea which can cause an ammonia spike if they aren't pushed down far enough into the substrate.

If you do choose to remove them, make sure you check your ammonia and nitrite in addition to your nitrate to ensure that messing with them didn't throw even more ammonia into the water.
ammonia is 0.5
Nitrite 0.5
Nitrate 10.0
I already separate the fish, remove what was left of jobe stick fertilizer and wash my substrate really good.
After I fill the tank up and make 100% water change.
I also put one of this micro filtration pads (polish pads) on my filter try to eliminate the whate film on surface of water. Nothing work so far.
The dish is safe on my 29g hospital tank but I'm afraid to lose my plants.
Your plants should be okay. The ammonia and nitrites won't hurt them. In fact, they'll use them for food just like they use nitrates. However, you do not want to put your fish back in until you get the ammonia and nitrites go back to 0 (and stay at 0).

To clean out the surface film, you may want to add purigen or carbon to your filter and change your filter's output so that it causes surface agitation in order to break up the film. Also, keep doing large water changes. Use the vacuum tube to not only clean whatever is on the surface of the substrate, but you can also use it like a surface skimmer. Don't forget to rinse out the vacuum tube and hose before using it to put fresh water back in the tank so you don't inadvertently transfer the film right back into the tank.
Use the siphon like a skimmer, or use other physical means of removing the white stuff. Try this: Put some polyester floss in a fish net and skim the surface with that.
If you drain the tank the surface scum will stick to the sides as the tank drains. You could then wipe off the sides. But it will also stick to everything else, such as the plants, driftwood, rocks... and wiping these is a lot harder.
Do not rely on activated carbon to remove the white stuff. AC is good to remove a lot of different things, but is not very active on most fertilizers. If this scum came from the Jobes Spikes I do not know how effective AC will be.
I am not saying do not use it at all, just suggesting that you not rely on AC as the only material that might help against the white scum.

Keep up the cleaning until the ammonia and nitrite both are 0 ppm and stay that way.
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