Nitrite levels? Discus NuB

[OscarSam]

I understand from what i've been reading that no amount of nitrite is acceptable for Discus. I have 5 3-4" discus in a 55g, filtration is a AC500 and Whisper 60 and my nitrite is currently .1mg/L and Ammonia appears to be zero?!?

Is this sufficient to kill my fish? What should I do, water changes?!?

[OscarSam]

Please?

[Proteus]

Nitrate levels of 10-20ppm will have little or no affect on your fish.

If you have plants, you will need some nitrates in the water otherwise they will not be as healthy as they could be.

Welcome to DF.com

[Merrilyn]

Hi OscarSam and welcome to the forum.

Good to see you're keeping a close eye on your water parameters. You're right, we don't like to see any reading of nitritres in the tank. It indicates that you filter is working hard to keep up with the bio load. Zero ammonia is perfect but we aim for zero nitrite too.

Is this a fairly new tank, or perhaps have you recently added a couple more fish?

You can keep your nitrites under control by simply doing a few more water changes each week, until your filter reaches full maturity.

A nitrate reading of anything under 20 is acceptable, but discus prefer under 10, and we achieve that by regular water changes.