Testing & water treatment FAQs

• Sometimes, when lots of ammonia is present, it prevents the beneficial bacteria from multiplying.
• When the beneficial bacteria remove ammonia and nitrite, this causes the aquarium water pH to drop. Make sure that the pH has not dropped to 6.4 or below as this will cause nitrification to slow or stop completely.
• Bacteria require minerals to grow and reproduce. If the water in your aquarium has a KH and GH of 0°dH then this may be preventing the bacteria from multiplying.

All of these problems can be helped by performing a 25% water change to restart the cycle. Make sure the pH is 6.8-8.0, KH is 3-15°dH and GH is 3-14°dH in the water you are adding, otherwise it will not help to solve the problem.

Because of the nature of how the test strips work, when an elevated amount of nitrite is present it will falsely show that there is a significant amount of nitrate present also. Ignore the nitrate results until nitrite has returned to 0mg/l.
If you have further questions, please take your results to a good aquatic retailer who can give you further advice on why the cycle is stalling or contact customer care at customercare@interpet.co.uk.

The majority of aquarium problems can be avoided by maintaining healthy water quality. Poor water quality issues such as high ammonia or high/low pH are invisible to the eye, so testing for them is essential.

Testing your water regularly will allow you to become familiar with your aquarium's standard chemistry, as well as monitor levels to treat any problems that might arise before they become a real issue to your livestock.

The short answer is that other animals or humans should not drink water from a treated aquarium.

The chemical components vary from treatment to treatment but as a rule we would not advise allowing pets to drink from any tank, not only for their health, but also for the health of the tank as pets can introduce contaminates to the water.

All Interpet treatments are listed with the National Poisons Bureau who can be contacted by your hospital, doctor or vet.

You can use our dosage calculator to find out how much treatment you should use for your aquarium size.

Treatment redosing varies from product to product.

You can use our dosage calculator to find out if your product requires a secondary dose or visit the product page for further details.

We advise that you cannot use neat tap water in an aquarium, as tap water contains chemicals like chlorine and heavy metals which are harmful to your fish.

We advise that you need to treat your tap water with Bioactive TapSafe to make it safe for use in your aquarium, whether you are starting out, topping up or doing a water change, you should always use TapSafe. 

The common causes of hair algae are excessive light – especially natural light – and excess nutrients in the aquarium water.

Treat the tank using Anti Hair Algae and ensure the aquarium lighting is on for no longer than 10 hours (this can be achieved using an auto timer. 

The PH must be between 6.5 & 8.5 for Green Away to be effective.

We would recommend testing your pH level by using our Test Kit. Once you have the result, you can then use either the pH Up or pH Down treatments.

You can only use ONE medication at any one time.

But any of the water quality treatments can be used at the same time and/or with one medication.

This could be due to an algae bloom. You need to check the nitrate levels in the water by using an Test Kit.

You could also reduce the length of time that the aquarium lights are switched on for and only feed the fish once a day.

The cloudiness will dissipate over a few days.

Carbon does not need to be removed when using any of the water quality treatments.

1ml of BioActive TapSafe treats 10ml of water.