What am I doing wrong?

[RD.]

Nutrafin water conditioner is sodium thiosulfate based, which means it only deals with chlorine residuals. If you have chloramine treated water it would be best to stick with Seachem, as both Prime & Safe will render the free ammonia (NH3) into a harmless form, at least for a period of time. Otherwise with the Nutrafin product with every water change you will also be adding ammonia. (with chloramine treated water) Either way at this point adding Prime would help detoxify your ammonia levels.

I had a look at your water treatment report for Montreal, and I can't find a residual level for disinfectant, but maybe I missed something? You might be best to call & ask. http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_dad=portal&_pageid=6937,68593573&_schema=PORTAL

But with a pH range around 8.0 year round, you really need to find out, as free ammonia is much more toxic at higher pH values. One last thing to note, the normal ammonia test strips and kits found at your LFS will give false ammonia readings when using Seachem Prime.
https://www.seachem.com/support/for...512-prime-and-false-positive-ammonia-readings

A cheap, quick, and accurate way to keep an eye on your NH3.
https://www.seachem.com/ammonia-alert.php

or you can get the whole test kit.
https://www.seachem.com/multitest-ammonia.php


And what Duane is saying is key, do not mess with any of your filters or media at this point. Every time that you do you take a step backwards in the cycle process. Especially in a bare bottom tank, as almost all of your bio bacteria is going to be found in your filter media.

Good luck.

 

[quasar]

Nutrafin water conditioner is sodium thiosulfate based, which means it only deals with chlorine residuals. If you have chloramine treated water it would be best to stick with Seachem, as both Prime & Safe will render the free ammonia (NH3) into a harmless form, at least for a period of time. Otherwise with the Nutrafin product with every water change you will also be adding ammonia. (with chloramine treated water) Either way at this point adding Prime would help detoxify your ammonia levels.

I had a look at your water treatment report for Montreal, and I can't find a residual level for disinfectant, but maybe I missed something? You might be best to call & ask. http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_dad=portal&_pageid=6937,68593573&_schema=PORTAL

But with a pH range around 8.0 year round, you really need to find out, as free ammonia is much more toxic at higher pH values. One last thing to note, the normal ammonia test strips and kits found at your LFS will give false ammonia readings when using Seachem Prime.
https://www.seachem.com/support/for...512-prime-and-false-positive-ammonia-readings

A cheap, quick, and accurate way to keep an eye on your NH3.
https://www.seachem.com/ammonia-alert.php

or you can get the whole test kit.
https://www.seachem.com/multitest-ammonia.php


And what Duane is saying is key, do not mess with any of your filters or media at this point. Every time that you do you take a step backwards in the cycle process. Especially in a bare bottom tank, as almost all of your bio bacteria is going to be found in your filter media.

Good luck.

I'm actually in Laval (island north of Montreal) what most LFS tell me is the water in Laval tends to be softer, but in some parts has a high copper amount.

So should I just not bother with the nutrafin dechlorinator? I bought a 4L jug that was on special. Would mixing it with a bit of prime help?

 

[RD.]

Ok, thanks. Nutrafin is fine if you are on a chlorine only system. I recommend that you find out what your water is treated with, and what the average disinfectant residual is, and proceed from there.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; You appear to be in the midst of a catch 22. Since you have fish in the tank and the tank is not yet cycled then the fish are constantly releasing ammonia and making a "fish urine soup" as Duanes said. (a cycled tank will have enough of both types of bb to remove the ammonia.) To help the fish you can do a lot of WC to dilute the ammonia.
OK, problem is diluting the ammonia enough to help the fish can slow down the growth of the bb which need the ammonia in order to colonize the surfaces of the tank. I guess you can do large WC every day to help the fish and keep the ammonia down but my take is the fish will still face some level of damage, even if small.

Don't know if you have a test kit yet. If not such a kit can be a good tool to help determine what to do. Knowing ammonia levels are will help. Many do not like the test strips. If you do get a test kit use it to test the source water (tap water - well water or such) as well as the tank water

 

[Hari Haran]

You could try Night Out II, it worked for me overnight, get the bigger bottle as you have a bigger tank.

 

[quasar]

You could try Night Out II, it worked for me overnight, get the bigger bottle as you have a bigger tank.

Is there anyone who sells it that ships to Canada?