Nitrite in Fish Tank Cycling

Video Transcript

"CHRISTIE OWNES: Hi. My name is Christie and I'm with Expert Village. And I'm teaching you proper care of fish today and a little bit about the different types of fish. Now we're going to talk about the second process of cycling your tank out which is called the nitrite cycle. The ammonia is going to be the first part of the cycle. The second part is going to be the nitrite. In about week three to four as the ammonia levels are coming back down, the nitrite level is going to go up. The nitrite level will go all the way up, peak out and drop back down. Usually, it takes about six weeks for this process. Sometimes it can take a little longer and take eight weeks. What I'm going to demonstrate to you now is how to do a nitrite test. As we did with the ammonia test, we're going to get our test vial that has the same little white line on it. We're going to take water out of the tank and put into the tube just like we did on the ammonia test. You can tell that we filled the bottle to the white line with the water. We'll set this down and we'll get the nitrite test box which is pink. On it, it has "Add five drops." What we'll do is we're going to remove the cap off the bottle, add five drops, put the top back on and shake the vial toward the color. This test process takes five minutes, but right now it's showing a nice pretty blue color. If this goes from a nice pretty blue color to a purple color, then we have high nitrites in the tank, which is also bad for the fish as well as the ammonia process. Nitrite levels can also be caused from too much fish food and too many fish in the tank as well as ammonia. If you have ammonia and nitrite in a tank both at the same time, then you need to do some major surgery on your tank to take care of the problem and find out what the problem is. 'Cause if you don't, unfortunately, you can lose your whole tank. So, if you have a fish tank, monitor your ammonia and your nitrite at least once a week, if not once every two weeks just to keep check on everything to make sure everybody's happy and okay."