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My advice would be making another partial water change immediately before other fish are affected too. 80 ppm nitrate is simply too high.

Thanks for your advice, but I am doing a 1/3 water change every 2 days, and cannot get my nitrates down! Did a water change today and removed 2 amano shrimps (last in first out!!) which were introduced just before the nitrate increase. I have a BiOrb if that helps at all! Oto is still alive and has eaten, but head looks very opaque and still quite lifeless, although it had a 1 minute dash around the tank earlier! Still at a loss as what to do. Guess I will just have to wait and see!

try to change water every (40%) day for about 4 days, and when you make a water change, do it when the lights are off...
that will do the trick
regards

make SURE that your nitrIte kit is working properly. i can't believe that your nitrAtes are so high if you are doing regular water changes. if you have any nitrItes, your nitrAte kit won't work properly and will register unusual high readings. nitrItes would cause your fish to react badly.

rick

Well he is still alive this morning, and one side of his belly has gone down (could it be constipation?) Still not moving much though despite the fact that his mate is whizzing around the tank. My test kit checks for nitrites too and they are at the lowest reading, as is the ammonia! I have a magnetic water softener on the cold water feed into our house, so the nitrates are almost zero. This also means that I have to supplement my KH levels every time I do a water change.

Readings this morning are:

Nitrates 50 mg/l
Nitrites 0 mg/l
ammonia 0 m/gl
KH 6
pH 7.6

Will take a water sample to my LFS today (they are fantastic!) and get them to put it through their computer for a full reading. For the last six months my water readings have been 99% and on the last trip when the nitrates shot up my reading was 85%! I have reduced the amount of food I am giving and obviously doing the water changes, so I cant understand why the Nitrates are up and all the other levels are near optimal. At least the Nitrate reading has gone down to 50 mg/l today.

What are the other fish in the tank? Is it possible that there was a dead fish (probably a big fish) hidden somewhere in the tank? That would be a primary source of high nitrate, if you have an efficient biological filter.

I have a 30 ltr Biorb with bio filter and only keep very small tropicals. Tetra, Gold Clouds, Harlequins, and Danios plus my 2 Otos. Did a head count and all present and correct.

I HAVE NEWS! MY OTO HAS MADE A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY!!!! His belly is back to normal and swimming and eating like nothing ever happened! Went to my LFS yesterday and had a water test and I was shocked! Water is 97%! Readings are:

pH 7.5
GH 7 drops
KH 7
Ammonia 0
NitrIte 0,1 mg/l
NitrAte 10 mg/l

Such good news. Obviously all my hard work paid off.

Thanks to all those who gave me advice. What a good Forum!

julibob wrote: Ammonia 0
NitrIte 0,1 mg/l
NitrAte 10 mg/l

You shouldn't really have any detectable Nitrite if the filter is mature and your bioload is within sensible limits. Has there recently been any medication added or similar disturbance that may have affected the filter bacteria?

julibob wrote:...I HAVE NEWS! MY OTO HAS MADE A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY!!!! His belly is back to normal and swimming and eating like nothing ever happened! ...

Glad to hear that...

We recently did a massive clean out, because I had snails breeding in my filter and under the ceramic media. We took out al the ceramic media bit by bit (recommeded as fine by the manufacturer) and washed it in the aquarium water (could this have been a bad move?!!!!) All the friendly bio bacteria live within and under the ceramic media! This may have been the problem and in which case, if some of the bacteria was destroyed then it will take time for it to get to mature levels again. Also, I put in a half dose of Sera Ammovec and Sera Nitrivec in weekly which is decribed as a Biostarter. This again was recommended to me by my LFS who are very good. That is the only medication I have put in except my KH booster and water conditioner which I have to add at every water change. My water levels have been at 99% for the last 6 months, so these regular meds have had no adverse affect. I can only assume that it was the introduction of 2 Amano Shrimp or the frenzied clearout that we did. Hope this gives you enough info and would like to hear your opinions.