Question about water test levels after water change

[i found nemo]

I had an episode last week where my 4 year old started going on a killing spree of the fish in our aquarium. She thought they needed salt, so she added more... a starfish, snails, and a fish died, which is how I found out she had done this. Well, a few days after this, she decided the fish were hungry, and fed them almost half a container of pellets. SO, I changed half of the water last week and checked the levels and they were ok. I found one my damsels dead today, and now my levels are off.

PH is at 8.2
Ammonia is at 0.50ppm
Nitrites are at 1.5
Nitrates are between 0 and 5.0ppm

So my question is are my levels from these readings off enough that I need to change the water again? Any suggestions would be great...I don't want to lose any more fish.

 

[gnashty]

Yes, continue to change water until the Ammonia and Nitrites are undetectable...I would knock out at least a 30% WC immediately (like right now, not tomorrow) and test again, if ammonia is still present, do another.....repeat as needed until this is under control

And find a way to keep the lil one away from it pronto

 

[i found nemo]

Will it stress the fish out too much if I keep chnging water too frequently?

 

[weaglereefer]

Yes, but a lot less than ANY ammonia or nitrite...

 

[weaglereefer]

Also, see if you can get your hands on a bottle of Prime to make the water less toxic.

 

[gnashty]

weaglereefer;564183 wrote: Yes, but a lot less than ANY ammonia or nitrite...

yeppers

weaglereefer;564184 wrote: Also, see if you can get your hands on a bottle of Prime to make the water less toxic.

This is what I would do...the sooner the better

 

[johnr2604]

Great advise. Keep doing water changes, Add some prime to lock up the ammonia, and you could also add some stability to give the bacteria a boost.

 

[i found nemo]

I added Prime to every bucket of water that I put in there last week. I do have some live bacteria that is refrigerated, should I add some of that as well when I change out the water?

 

[weaglereefer]

As long as you're getting ammonia and nitrite readings, keep using the Prime (I think it's every 24 hours? But I'm not sure). Doing that probably saved some of your livestock.

 

[smallblock]

Lemme ask a question here, so his nitrate levels are decent, but the nitrite are pretty high, that means that the nitrite is probably all the left over food in its firsts stage of decomposing right?

nitrate was supposed to be between 0 and .5 right? on his first post