Water help

[grantd77]

I set up my 3 gallon tank about 2 months ago and I have 2 rainbow sharks and 2 black finned tetras in there. I now know that the rainbow sharks were not a good idea for such a small tank so I am trying to take them back to the store. However all the chemicals in my tank are much too high so the store doesnt want to take them because they will die in their "clean" water. The chemicals they tested and told me were too high were ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, pH, and one other one I cant remember. I have been trying to get those down for the last few weeks now by doing water changes and I got a Chemi-Pure bag for my filter. What else is there to do? Also is it ok to do a couple water changes in one day?

[Administrator]

Definitely way too much fish for that size of tank. Even with a good filter, 3 gallons will not be able to support all those fish. If you have detectable ammonia, then your biological filtration is not established, non-existent (ie no filter) or overwhelmed. Because you have ammonia, which is highly toxic when present in the water, you may want to consider getting a plastic storage bin from Home Depot or Lowes which can hold 20 to 30 gallons of water or so and filling that up, dechlorinating the water, match the temperature of your existing tank and move the fish over.

Normally I would not recomend a complete water swap as doing so reduces the beneficial bacteria in the aquarium too much and can be a shock to the fish as the water chemistry (temp, pH, etc) change too quickly, but in this case your fish are living in toxic water so it is the best thing to do. Once your fish are moved to the temp tank, you can bag up the rainbow sharks and take them back to the store. I would suggest doing a 80% water change on the 3 gallon, then let the filter run with the chemi-pure bag for a few days then perform a 50% water change and go ahead and re-introduce the black finned tetras back in. You will want to keep an eye on the water parameters and probably perform 20% water changes each day until your filtration has had a chance to catch up.

To answer your question about multiple water changes in a day...normally you should not need to ever do that for a properly functioning aquarium. The negative to it is that it changes the water chemistry too rapidly, which stresses the fish.

What type of filtration are you using on your 3 gallon? What type of substrate are you using?

Also a general rule of thumb for freshwater tropicals is about 1" of fish per every 2 gallons or so...so you can see how limiting a 3 gallon aquarium can be.

Good luck,
-AD.com Admin

[grantd77]

I am using an Eclipse 3 system so what ever filter comes with that