Please Help! Off-the-Charts Water Parameters

[dogofwar]

Does the tap have chloramines? That could be what's showing up...

Matt

 

[JLW]

Ammonia of 2.0 - 8.0 is extremely lethal, especially at the high end of the scale... The best test kit is your fish -- what do they look like? Are they healthy, swimming, spawning, eating?

I think a good first step for you might be to take some water out of the tank in a clean plastic or glass bottle, at least 16-oz, and bring it to your local fish store for testing. I suspect that your test kit may be having an issue.

If, however, your test kit is good, and these are accurate values, then you have had some sort of massive die off of beneficial bacteria in the tank. (Why do we have to qualify "bacteria" with "beneficial?" That should be the default!). The quickest fix would be to do several large water changes to get the ammonia down to reasonable, and an infusion of healthy bacteria into your filter system. Take some dirty filter media from work -- the dirtier the better -- and rinse it in your fish tanks. Even a few gunky bio-balls tossed into the filters of your tank would help.

 

[mchambers]

The pH drop should not kill your bacteria, because it's not that big of a drop.

 

[CichlidAddict]

The pH drop should not kill your bacteria, because it's not that big of a drop.

Yes, the pH drop will not kill the BB, as there are bacteria adapted to higher and lower pH range. But dropping from 8 in the Tap water to below 7.2 in a week is a concern. With 75-100% WC weekly, the pH should remain close to whatever pH comes out of the tap. So I don't really know what causes your drop in pH. I had fish that dropped dead from pH crash due to over loading in a small tank.

 

[Frank Cowherd]

Yes, if you really have ammonia at the levels you reported, your fish would be dead. If they are not, the ammonia level is wrong.

 

[zackcrack00]

I just got done testing the the water from the tap and 5 of my tanks with the test kits at work. All tests correlate and are therefore reading correctly. The pH reads around 8.0 from tap and then 6.2 in my tanks. (I used the low range pH test at work) Ammonia is 1-8 in the tanks and 0 in the tap. I think the only reason my fish are alive is the dechlor. Not to mention, this is in all of my tanks, not just a few. Fish are showing no signs of stress, just the babies are quickly dying off. Adults all seem perfectly fine.


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[JLW]

I would suspect that your test kit is picking up ammonia bound to your dechlorinator, as the fish are still alive.

Assuming you aren't wildly overfeeding, overstocking or some such, I would suspect that you've had a huge bacterial die off. Get an inoculation of fresh bacteria, stat!

 

[zackcrack00]

I would suspect that your test kit is picking up ammonia bound to your dechlorinator, as the fish are still alive.

Assuming you aren't wildly overfeeding, overstocking or some such, I would suspect that you've had a huge bacterial die off. Get an inoculation of fresh bacteria, stat!

Will do. but I'd like to know why the bacteria died off in the first place. Any ideas?


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[Frank Cowherd]

If the fish are alive, the ammonia cannot be as high as you are reporting. The fish are telling you the ammonia cannot be very high.

Try adding a bit of excess dechlorinator to your tap water and see what reading you get. IF the dechlorinator is affecting the reading, that should show it.

The bacteria will not die in high ammonia. In fact you can add ammonia to a new tank without fish to get the bacteria started.

Is there any other additive you are adding to the tank??

 

[zackcrack00]

Frank, I just filled two 5-gallon buckets with water from the tap and dechlorinated one of them while filling, like usual. I will admit I usually do double the water conditioner needed just to cover anything I missed. It just feels weird to put less than half a ml of dechlor in a 5-gallon bucket Anyway, I added the amount of dechlor to the bucket that I add when doing water changes. I let it sit and then tested pH and Ammonia. Ammonia is 0 in both buckets and pH is slightly lower in the dechlorinated bucket.

Thinking back, the ammonia spikes in these tanks could be that I thoroughly cleaned the sponge filters last week. With tank water yes, but nonetheless I really squeezed these until they came clean. This obviously contributes to the loss of a portion of bacteria, but enough that the ammonia levels are so terrible?


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[dogofwar]

Squeezing out the sponge filters shouldn't cause problems - I do it regularly without issue. Also, nitrifying "bacteria" are all over the tank substrate, decorations, etc. not just on the filter.

Matt

Frank, I just filled two 5-gallon buckets with water from the tap and dechlorinated one of them while filling, like usual. I will admit I usually do double the water conditioner needed just to cover anything I missed. It just feels weird to put less than half a ml of dechlor in a 5-gallon bucket Anyway, I added the amount of dechlor to the bucket that I add when doing water changes. I let it sit and then tested pH and Ammonia. Ammonia is 0 in both buckets and pH is slightly lower in the dechlorinated bucket.

Thinking back, the ammonia spikes in these tanks could be that I thoroughly cleaned the sponge filters last week. With tank water yes, but nonetheless I really squeezed these until they came clean. This obviously contributes to the loss of a portion of bacteria, but enough that the ammonia levels are so terrible?


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[Frank Cowherd]

Thinking back, the ammonia spikes in these tanks could be that I thoroughly cleaned the sponge filters last week. With tank water yes, but nonetheless I really squeezed these until they came clean. This obviously contributes to the loss of a portion of bacteria, but enough that the ammonia levels are so terrible?

Cleaning the sponge filter may cause some loss of bacteria but the flow rate through the filter increases and since there is bacteria on all other surfaces of the tank (glass, gravel, decorations, plants, plastic parts) there would still be enough bacteria to remove the ammonia.

I am still of the opinion that your ammonia reading is wrong, for whatever reason.

What happens when you add dechlor to a bucket full of water that the test showed contained 2 or more ppm of ammonia.

Another thought is you do not raelly have 2 to 8 ppm of ammonia, but have the decimal point in the wrong place. Could the readings really be 0.2 to 0.8 (even this level is lethal) or it should they be 0.02 to 0.08 (which might be OK). Such an error could come from a dilution factor. And zero reading would sill be zero reading, but the high readings would be false.

BTW what test are you using? Describe it please.

 

[CichlidAddict]

Still can't understand why your pH can drop from 8 to 6.2 in all tanks. I had total wipe out of my African cichlids when the pH dropped below 6.8.

 

[Daltharang]

If your able to, i would check the Gh and Kh. This is the exact same issue I ran into. My tap water isn't hard enough to hold the ph which reads 7.8 out of the tap, and in a day or 2 after a water change my ph wouldn't even show up on the scale because it was so low This caused me to lose bacteria and go through a minicycle, which caused an ammonia spike. I ended up doing 80% water changes everyday for a week and adding crushed coral to the filters to up the hardness. Between the water changes and prime it kept the ammonia in check/detoxified until everything stabled out. That was about 6 months ago and haven't had an issue at all since then.

 

[zackcrack00]

Cleaning the sponge filter may cause some loss of bacteria but the flow rate through the filter increases and since there is bacteria on all other surfaces of the tank (glass, gravel, decorations, plants, plastic parts) there would still be enough bacteria to remove the ammonia.

I am still of the opinion that your ammonia reading is wrong, for whatever reason.

What happens when you add dechlor to a bucket full of water that the test showed contained 2 or more ppm of ammonia.

Another thought is you do not raelly have 2 to 8 ppm of ammonia, but have the decimal point in the wrong place. Could the readings really be 0.2 to 0.8 (even this level is lethal) or it should they be 0.02 to 0.08 (which might be OK). Such an error could come from a dilution factor. And zero reading would sill be zero reading, but the high readings would be false.

BTW what test are you using? Describe it please.

I'm using the API test kit. Here's a link to the smaller version. I can't find the full test kit. It's the same chemicals for each text and instructions but this one doesn't have gh or kh.

I believe I have the decimal in the right place, but I will check when I get back to my dad's. All of my tanks are at his house. I'll also run that test with the ammonia and the dechlor.


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[zackcrack00]

If your able to, i would check the Gh and Kh. This is the exact same issue I ran into. My tap water isn't hard enough to hold the ph which reads 7.8 out of the tap, and in a day or 2 after a water change my ph wouldn't even show up on the scale because it was so low This caused me to lose bacteria and go through a minicycle, which caused an ammonia spike. I ended up doing 80% water changes everyday for a week and adding crushed coral to the filters to up the hardness. Between the water changes and prime it kept the ammonia in check/detoxified until everything stabled out. That was about 6 months ago and haven't had an issue at all since then.

I'll test them when I get to my dad's house again.


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