Ammonia Build up

[Sunny.C]

ok i know African Cichlids are very dirty fish. i have a 35gallon aquaone setup(all in one unit). My ammonia goes high very quickly even when i do water changers every 3 days.i'm not over feeding the fish that's for sure, i've noticed that alot of fish poop gets into the gravel easy.Also it doesn't look like the filter is strong enough to grab the dirt from the opposite side of the tank.Should i try do a 40% water change empty the tank and clean the gravel fully???or should i just get a good second filter in there?

 

[Phantom Thief]

Ammonia levels only go up if:

i) The tank is not cycled
ii) The tank is overstocked.

Otherwise i don't see why your ammonia would reach high levels so quickly.

P.T.

 

[The_Priest]

I have the exact same problem with fish poop building up at the bottom of the tank, the only way to do it is to do water changes every 2 days to clear it out 10% to 25% max this is for 2 reasons.

Doing a huge waterchange may result in losing some of your benificial bacteria in the filter because doing a big water change will wash your bacteria out of your filter, so little and often waterchanges are fine and wont do this, you do need to after every water change use some form of bacterial supplement to help your filter, nutrafins cycle is good as this helps the filter to produce good bacteria inorder to brake down the toxins such as ammonia (the cycle).

Second reason african chiclids can be very twitchy, so by doing big water changes you may be altering the water parmeters such as PH, Temp, all of which can cause stress to fish. By leaving it a few days in between changes your water will have time to settle and come up to the correct paremeters.
Hope this helps.

 

[Sunny.C]

This is a new tank, i have cycled with fish in there for a bit over 2 weeks now. Is that enough time for a full cycle Doing water changes helps my problem but then with 2-3 days back to normal. I don't think the tank is over stocked, it is recommend to over stock these fish anyways(with good filtration). What do you guys think i should do??? If you guys need some pics of the tank to give me a better feedback, let me know of your email. Regards.

 

[Rodders]

Have you put any filter media with the bacteria from another filter that is established in your new filter, from a LFS or another tank?
If not then 2 weeks isnt really long enough to fully cycle!!!
Feed the minimum you can. Try and get some filter media from a mature filter. You can also put some gravel in a stocking from a mature tank and let this lay on your gravel in the new tank (must be in contact with your gravel).

I've used Ammo lock before when i had really high ammonia, this was only because i put fish in too fast before fully cycling the tank!!!
I managed to get mine through it!

 

[fufanu360]

tank probably aint fully cycled yet man,

how many fish do you have in it?

 

[Sunny.C]

i didn't add any mature media in, but i did put in live bacteria.i have a total of 9 small fish in there.should i just feed then a little amount until i can get the cycle finished off??? How long should a full cycle take??? 3-4 weeks??? What can i do in the mean time to keep them safe??? should i do water changes or will that stuff up the cycle

 

[Rodders]

You'll be looking at 3-4 weeks atleast.
Yes, feed minimal, that should keep your ammonia levels as low as possible. Dont leave any food uneaten in there, otherwise that will rot down and raise ammonia levels which your filter cant yet cope with.
Water changes will dilute the high levels of nitrite, nitrate and ammonia, but dont do them every day.
Theres also a product called Amquel that nutralises nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. I use it on my tap water as i have very high nitrates out the tap and it works great.

Keep an eye out for diesaease, if theres high levels of ammonia etc... it can lead to stress and then they are subseptable to fin rot and white spot, things like that.
I did the same as you and managed to get most of my fish through, i lost a couple. I had extremely high nitrates, nitrites and ammonia, they should have all died really, but somehow they didnt!!!!! I did have to cope with white spot and fin rot though.

Keep adding the live bacteria to get the filter kick started.

Good luck!!