High Nitrites, slight ammona

my tank has been good 55g lots of live rock (40-50lbs), 0 ammonia or nitrites and nitrates were at 20, ph 8.0, alkalinity between 180- 300 which according to dipstick ideal. we did a water change yesterday about 10-15% change everyone looks good coral, fish chromis, wrasse sixline, coral beauty and small striped puffer ( will be getting a bigger tank for puffer as he gets bigger small clownfish.

* Now ammonia is at 0.5 and nitrites are at 1.0 and nitrates around 20 what should i do?? please help me i don't want to kill everyone

 

I think the main cause is your puffer there. They are on the messy side and produce a lot of waste in general. It sounds like you are using the dip strip tests. I found those are not very accurate. But all you can do is do regular water changes until the parameters are back to normal

 

Are you using test strips or test kit? How old is tank and how quickly did you add these fish?

 

Did you happen to disturb the sand bed during this water change?

 

i had been using the dipstick test but i changed to the vial tests everything was accurate on both. i added them over the last 3 weeks. since the parameters were normal after i had the chromis and damsel in them for 2 weeks or so. everything had been going good until a slight hi nitrite yesterday so i did the water change. its probably been a total of 5 to 6 weeks since the adding the damsel and chromis ( when i started the tank i got 25 gallons of already cycled saltwater from someone who has two 300 gallon tanks and from the pet store a filter to put in the back that had the bacteria needed. the only thing different i forgot to mention is i added a uv sterilizer yesterday says its for up to 50 gallon tank

 

yes i did disturb the sand bed also i do have about 5 hermit crabs

 

I may be off base here but with the nitrite and ammonia showing up again you may have started a new cycle by adding too many fish quicker than the biological filter can process the ammonia. The tank is 5-6 weeks old and you already have 4-5 fish and corals? Is this accurate?

 

yea that is correct
, i got premixed water from a fish store could that have anything to do with it or did i just add to many fish to fast . the fish store new what i had and what i was adding and i told them the parameters and they said as long as i did the water changes and kept the filter clean and skimmer too i would be ok

 

i also cleaned the filter too should i have not done that? if not how often should i clean it

 

I think you may have added too many fish too fast. The biological filter isn't established enough yet to support that much new pollution. I think if you continue to monitor the ammonia levels and be ready to do water changes should they rise higher you may be able to weather this. Anyone else?