I think I just panicked and made the situation worse.

[swoup]

I got a flowerhorn a month or so ago and everything has been going great. I'm trying to do right by him so he had a 75 gallon to start with sand bottom and a fx6 as a filter, heater on an inkbird, lights and all the basic stuff. I have a second tank for a few blood parrots and I had to seperate one of them and moved him to a 3rd tank. I then moved him back to his original tank and I ended up leaving the sand in his tank 90% drained but let it sit for a couple days and then figured id try to re use it. I spent a good 20 mins washing it in a 5 gallon bucket and then added it to the flowhorn tank.At this point I also added a small bottle of safe start + because I also disrupted his filter to add a bunch of purigen.


Next day everything seemed fine but the following day, today, when I got home from work the flowerhorn seem scared and jumpy and I checked the water and the

nitrites were somewhere in the 2-5 ppm range.
amonia was .25 ppm
nitrates were 5 ppm

I instantly did a half tank water change and tested nitrites again and instantly it was again dark purple before the timer even finished. For some reason I got it in my head that the sand I added back was causing it and didn't know what else to do other then to remove most all of the substraight.

Currently
nitrites are .25 ppm .
amonia was 0 ppm
nitrates were 0-5 ppm

Did I just mess up the whole tanks cycle? I assume Was this climb in nitrite just the cycle starting from the safe start plus? The tank was cycled before and stable but i haven't seen a half water change result in no nitrite improvement before so I kinda think I overreacted but I'm not sure if I just made it worse. I've max dosed the tank with prime and will continue to do so following the instructions until everything stabilizes but I wanted to get some advice on what I should have done?



View attachment IMG_2108.jpg

 

[phreeflow]

Not sure I understand everything but I think it was less the sand and more the FX6 that was a problem if you left the filter off when the tank was drained.

Just keep doing a bunch of water changes and cut feedings to every other day or less until the filter catches up

 

[ken31cay]

So it was the first tank (75gal) that you took the sand from?

The beneficial bacteria will accumulate on the tank's interior surface areas, especially places where water is quickly & constantly moving past. So most of the BB accumulates in the filter but also some on the tank walls, decor inside the tank, and usually to a much smaller degree on the substrate. It is more likely your interrupted the cycle by disturbing the BB in the filter rather than having anything to do with the sand.

 

[swoup]

Not sure I understand everything but I think it was less the sand and more the FX6 that was a problem if you left the filter off when the tank was drained.

Just keep doing a bunch of water changes and cut feedings to every other day or less until the filter catches up

Thank you for your reply. The fx6 has been on the same tank on the whole time. The 3rd that was left sitting was just temporary tank to hold my obnoxious blood parrot blumkin. But yeah I'm taking your guys advice and just doing watch changes and watching.

As a side note has anyone seen a FH that can turn himself dark black when he gets upset or there is too much black color around him? Ill try to get a pick next time he does it