Amonia still spiking.

Jefft

Jefft

Members
I have done water changes. I have put in the instant cycle stuff. I have vacumed. I have driven to get old dirty filters. I have purchased a new filter because the old one didnt seem to be working. I've let the tank go trying to rid out the spike. I have put in "stability" from seachem. I honestly dont know what to do all other readings are normal and good but amonia just spikes right on up there. My 30 breeder and 55 along with 2 10s are all fine. My 75 will not stabalize out it has been running since May 4 and I for the life of me cannot figure out how to get my amonia under control. Any suggestions or do I ride it out and hope I dont lose too many? Last night I did a 50 % water change and I am right back up to a 4 on amonia scale. Any suggestions?
 
dogofwar

dogofwar

CCA Members
What is the source of the ammonia?

Are there fish in the tank? They'd be dead at 4.0 PPM of ammonia. Maybe the test reading isn't accurate...

If you have a seeded sponge filter let it run...and readings should come down...

Matt
 
Jefft

Jefft

Members
Yes there are currently fish in the tank all juvies. I dont see any signs of dire distress. But water is certainly murkey and the amonia reading I took certainly looked like the green of the 4 ppm bar. Let me recheck water. I will post readings.
 
T

tug

Guest
Could this be due to chloramines and the type of dechlorinator?

If you use a thiosulfite-based water conditioner and have alot of chloramine in your tap, an ammonia test kit might give a false positive for "ammonia".
 
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jonclark96

jonclark96

Past CCA President
Sorry things haven't settled out. I've never had a problem with using an established filter to kick start the bacteria in a new tank.

+1 on taking a water sample to get tested. Maybe your test kit is old.

Good luck!
 
Andrewtfw

Andrewtfw

Global Moderators
If in fact it's not a false reading, you could take a few pounds of dirty gravel from the 55, put it in a media bag or stocking and place it in your 75.

Sent from my DROIDX
 
T

tug

Guest
After reading the OP again if it were a false reading then the test would give a false reading for all the tanks. Is there anything different in the 75 like the substrate your using?
 
E

ezrk

Members
It may well be a real reading, if you look at the blog in my sig you can get the history of NH3 and NO2 readings of our tanks that we cycled.

One thing we found (and found very frustrating...) in cycling our 110s (which used recylced media, Dr Tims, etc) was that FFX country puts a fair amount of chloramine into our tap water. Prime breaks up the chloramine into the CL2 and NH3 and then binds up the NH3 to be non-toxic - which is great.

But it means that our tanks always read as having NH3 present after water changes. Now our bio-filtration eats up this NH3 which is great. What we found on the last cycle was (duh) that all this NH3 become NO2, which are slower growing than the NH3. At one point we had very efficient ammonia eating bacteria and not very good nitrite eating bacteria. Changing water with FFX county water was pretty uselss for getting rid of NO2....

We resorted to taking "old" water out of another tank for water changes. While this had a fair amount of NO3 in it, at least it didn't have NH3 or NO2.

Anyway, consider testing your tap water and watch out for an NO2 spike in a partially cycled aquarium.
 
Scorp1us

Scorp1us

Members
I was having an ammonia problem until recently. My fish seemed fine, even though I was in the 2.5 area. I applied a couple fixes: I got better filtration out of my existing filter by moving to filter floss. I had a lot of particulate in the water. And I changed my substrate to one of those ammonia removing substrates.

I have a theory that the particulate was being digested in the tank and not in the filter because the results were so fast. Once all that decomposing particulate was held in the filter it upped its conversion efficiency. It took about 4-5 days to get to "crystal clear"


Or it could be the substrate. Regardless, it looks and tests great now. And my fish are much more energetic. They weren't lethargic before, but now they are much more social. Where as before they were keeping to themselves.
 
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