This is erroneous info. Getting rid of any accumulated junk in the
gravel is to your advantage and vac the gravel is not going to hurt a
thing. It will do more good than bad. Your not gonna suck out any
bacteria with a vac of the gravel.....thats for sure! Crude in a
gravelbed ina FW system is bad......crude in the substrate of a
sal****er suysten is beneficial. You have freshwater system, so get
rid ofg any junk as its working against your efforts.

On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:32:43 -0600, Zëbulon
wrote:


"JB" wrote in message
legroups.com...
I tried the suggestions on vacuuming my gravel for waste, cutting back
on my feeding to now once every other day and not very much... I've
completed two 25% water changes, and added AmQuel to try and Neutralize
the Nitrates and Nitrites..

So far I have the following...

Nitrate = 40ppm

Nitrite = 5.0ppm

Hardness = 150ppm (up from 75ppm from before)

Alkalinity = 0 (yes Zero.. It was around 40ppm Just yesterday)

PH = 6.8 (down from 7.2)

Now keeping in mind I did a 100% Water change last Tuesday 9th, and
have three 2" sword tail fish & about 14 or so fry in a net and with
the 100% change I cleaned all Decor & Gravel well, got rid of algae,
etc.. I don't know what I'm missing or can do to fix my levels..

My fish are just kinda "hanging around" most of the time... Sorry if
this seems like a identical repost, but it's more of an update and I
don't know what to do...
=============================
For now keep doing partial water changes until the cycle finishes. Don't
disturb the gravel or filter material as the good bacteria are tying to hang
on and multiply. Keep feeding sparingly and keep us posted.



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I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!