An Awkward Fish/snail Cycle

[armyofchuckness]

I did a lot of things poorly when I got started with my 10 Gallon aquarium, and as a result several fish perished. I'm left with a peppered cory and a golden apple snail. I intend to do my darndest to keep these two alive.

I moved the Cory to a one gallon tank and the apple snail to a little fish bowl while I rinsed and cleaned everything in the 10 gallon, washing only with a vinegar and water solution. The gravel was purchased new for the tank. The filter is a brand new Aqua-Tech power filter. The heater is brand new and appropriate to the size of the 10 gallon. The only other things in the tank are a three inch airstone (also brand new) and some antique bottles which were both thoroughly cleaned with vinegar and water and added to the tank with the fresh water.

Attempts to find pure ammonia (minus surfectant) were unsuccessful, so I let the tank run for 10 days using Nutrafin "Cycle." A product a person who owned several aquariums highly recommended for cycling water. By the end of ten days (the instructions recommended wait time), my master test kit came in the mail and the tanks readings were exactly where everything should be. I carefully added the cory and snail, using a small baggy to acclimate them to the temperature, etc. etc.

Levels stayed good for a day or two, so I began to regain confidence. I went to PetSmart and bought three tubes of aquarium plants and added them to the tank, following directions carefully. The ammonia went up to 2.0 ppm shortly after. I added more Cycle which claims to eliminate ammonia and the levels dropped slightly, but immediately shot back up. The cory seems okay, but the snail will have none of it and stays at the surface or just above the surface.

I've done numerous water changes. In the last five days I've done four 50%-70% water changes, but the results are always the same. Within a matter of hours, the ammonia goes from 0ppm to 2.0-4.0. The snail is now in the fishbowl with fresh water, but still seems to not be doing too well. The cory is still in the tank and does not appear distressed as he did during the first tank disaster.

I guess my first question is: Could the eight plants I added to the tank be a contributing factor to such sudden ammonia rises? And the other obvious question is, "How do I keep my two friends alive and happy until this all blows over?"

Current tank levels are:
PH: 7.0
Ammonia: 2.0
Nitrites: 0.0
Nitrates: 10

The tank is also slightly white-cloudy.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[cowboy507]

I am fairly new to tanks but i think i am going through a similar problem. I tried some sort of biological cycle, something similar to nutrafin, but it didnt do anything so i just added fish, so now im in a fish-in cycle, yay me..

I have found that to keep the levels in check i will have to do at least one 50% water change a day, sometimes I will have to do one 50% change and one 20-30% change and this keeps the ammonia and nitrIte below .25 ppm. I am not sure if the plants affect the ammonia i know that they will use the nitrAtes, but i dont think they affect ammonia.

If you can do a fishless cycle. But if not, just keep doing bi-daily water test and the necessary water changes. to speed the process along you can raise the temp (26 degrees +) and raise the pH (8.0-8.2 is good)

Edit:
the cloudyness should go away this is a sigh that you are still cycling. it is usually good.

 

[armyofchuckness]

Thanks for the advice. Nice to know I don't have a cursed tank. I was honestly starting to wonder.

 

[Ally555]

The reason for all the ammonia is because you have not cycled your tank. The nutrafin stuff does practically nothing. You are now in a 'Fish-in' cycle. IMO you should take the cory and the snail back to a LFS and read up on fishless cycling.

 

[OldMan47]

Rapidly growing plants will use up ammonia in the water and can be used as the only filter in a tank if you have enough of them. On the other hand, plants that are not thriving and growing are a part of the bioload and make it harder to control ammonia in the tank because they produce ammonia by having leaves die and rot. Lots of large water changes will control your ammonia problem but can become a burden on any but the smaller tanks. I have received free samples of Cycle in the past and even put some into a new tank. It didn't seem to hurt anything but I saw no benefit from it either.

 

[armyofchuckness]

Thank you all for the advice. Unfortunately, it's too late to take the fish and snail back to the store. I'll keep them in small separate tanks and do my best to get the tank cycled without them in it. OldMan47, your links in your signature have been most helpful. Hopefully the local Ace Hardware sells pure ammonia. Didn't even think about them. The other hardware stores, grocery stores and pharmacies all had nothing.

 

[waterdrop]

That's the spirit army! You've got to think of the "finding of ammonia" as a "detective adventure" and go after it! Your places to explore are just as you've said, groceries, hardware stores, big-box stores, any place you can dream up that might want to make money selling mops and brooms and cleaning liquids. And you can't give up easily in each store: sometimes the people who work there have been told not to let people know they have it because it might be used for some sort of bad purpose. Sometimes its the opposite and the people will say they have ammonia but point you to the wrong section of the store. If possible, take the time to investigate the store yourself.

Depending on where you live, there are sometimes even pictures of the correct type of bottles of ammonia posted in various threads here on TFF. As you know, the stuff you want is pure, clear, household ammonia, which is really technically called aqueous ammonia, being usually 10% or less ammonia and the rest just water (ammonia is a gas naturally.) In many countries the bottles are very unhelpful with what's in them! You want to try to determine that there are no dyes, fragrances or, as you've already had trouble with, soaps or surfactants. To tell the truth, I guess for most of us this means that it looks clear, smell like just strong ammonia if we take a distant whiff (be careful!) and especially we look to see if the bubbles die out in 2 or 3 seconds just like water, after we shake it. If it bubbles or foams a lot longer then it likely has soap.

Once you've found it, this darn hard to find ammonia and the liquid test kit and the knowledge both in our fishless cycling article (by rdd1952) and in yours and others posts is what you need to better understand your water and the state of "cycledness" of any of your filter/tank systems.

I'm pretty surprised a single cory in a ten gallon could possibly be polluting it with that much ammonia that fast. Like OM47 I'd have to suspect that the plants must not be doing well and are breaking down. Or there is a strange substrate. If you are just using standard gravel, that shouldn't be giving off any ammonia. Or you are still putting something else into the aquarium, but you've stopped any other chemicals or the snake-oil bacteria stuff, right? What about your tap water? Why don't you test that if you haven't already and post that up for the members to see. Moving the cory to a smaller temporary place really probably just complicates how you will care for it, although its true that a smaller container makes for easier water changes. You'll want to use the "fish-in" cycling article for the details of maintaining the cory in the uncycled container. The snail you saw crawling above the surface is probably just reacting to the environments you are creating being too sterile for it to find food. A snail is going to be happiest in a well established environment with some excess food for it to find! You might try sinking a bit of lettuce leaf or other vegatble for the snail.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[armyofchuckness]

Thanks for the advice, Waterdrop! I'll be checking tonight to get the ammonia. I've checked my tap water un-treated and there's no ammonia in the system. It's very unusual. It is a used aquarium but it has been rinsed and cleaned completely with vinegar and water, and rinsed again. I find it hard to believe the tank is the cause of the contaminants. The only other things in the tank are aquarium gravel, river rocks and the glass bottles, all of which have been soaked and cleaned thoroughly.

I've read all the fishless and fish-in cycling methods and I'd like to try and do the fishless cycle and try to keep the little tank clean. We shall see. I would hope with the high levels of ammonia in the tank now, I'm well on my way. I'll get the snail some lettuce too.

 

[gaz gun man]

keeping the cory and snail in 'small seperate tanks' wont do them much good either, as both tanks with be cycling aswell, depending on this size of the tanks, as neither are major waste producers.