Ammonia Emergency

[dsiegel13]

I just tested my tank this afternoon, first time I have checked in about a week and the Ammonia level is at least 8 ppm! The test liquid is dark green. I have no idea how this happened, the tank was running along with no problems for the longest time, then bamm, Ammonia.

Is there a quick way to drop the level safely? I changed the filter (second one this week). I had changed 60% of the water this past weekend and I plan on doing a 50% water change tomorrow and I dropped in a dose of Prime. What are the risks to the fish?

Current set up:
10 gal US
pH: 6.8
Ammonia: 8 ppm
Nitrates: 5 ppm
Nitrites: 0 ppm
Temp: 79 degrees F
Livestock: 5 Tiger Barbs, 2 Dwarf Gouramis
Fully Planted: Crypts, Anubis, and Wisteria
Lighting: Mini T5 - approx 6-8 hours/day
Filter: Penguin 100 w/ Bio Wheel; baffled to keep fish from blowing around the tank from the power of the filter unbaffled

Please Help.

 

[afremont]

I just tested my tank this afternoon, first time I have checked in about a week and the Ammonia level is at least 8 ppm! The test liquid is dark green. I have no idea how this happened, the tank was running along with no problems for the longest time, then bamm, Ammonia.

Is there a quick way to drop the level safely? I changed the filter (second one this week). I had changed 60% of the water this past weekend and I plan on doing a 50% water change tomorrow and I dropped in a dose of Prime. What are the risks to the fish?

Current set up:
10 gal US
pH: 6.8
Ammonia: 8 ppm
Nitrates: 5 ppm
Nitrites: 0 ppm
Temp: 79 degrees F
Livestock: 5 Tiger Barbs, 2 Dwarf Gouramis
Fully Planted: Crypts, Anubis, and Wisteria
Lighting: Mini T5 - approx 6-8 hours/day
Filter: Penguin 100 w/ Bio Wheel; baffled to keep fish from blowing around the tank from the power of the filter unbaffled

Please Help.

What do you mean when you say you changed your filter, second one this week? Did you replace your bio-wheel? If so then you lost your beneficial bacteria and will be virtually cycling from the start, but it should go allot faster. The Prime must be helping since 8ppm should probably have killed your fish by now. Do none of the fish pant or have red gills? I would change as much water as you can at one time. Two 50% changes in a back to back will only replace 75% of the water since half the water you take out on the second change was new clean water.

 

[DrRob]

Aye, +1 to afremont, unless that tank is very heavily planted then the nitrate is very low for a mature tank. Mine hovers around that level with a high tech planted set up and a 0 nitrate water change source. Lots of manufacturers tell you to replace the filters in a tank after a certain period of time. I've never really understood how they get away with that advice. I think most people here clean their filters in water from the tank (gently) about once a month or two (or when they look too dirty or flow drops) and replace them only when they start to fall apart.

Worth having a good check around the tank, behind decor etc to make sure that there's nothing dead in there. I had a slug fall in the tank once and spike my ammonia.

Only other question is, do you have gravel, and do you clean it? Sometimes it's just a level of organic matter that's slowly built up that it the problem.

Overall though, I suspect afremont hit the nail on the head, and start with a 90%, or as close as you can get to it, water change, which will still only drop your ammonia to 0.8ppm, then consider a 50% the next day to get it down to 0.4, still too high and it'll be rising due to the fish still excreting.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

It's not as bad as it seems because of the relatively low pH. The amount of free ammonia(the toxic stuff) is only about 0.03ppm. Still if the pH were to rise you'd be in big trouble. Personally I would put the fish in a bucket and completely empty the tank. Fill it back up with dechlorinated water and then acclimatise the fish to this by adding some water from the tank gradually over half an hour or so. Then put the fish back in. This will remove the most ammonia and cause least shock to the fish.

However, what you need to know is why the ammonia has shot up and the most obvious cause would be that the filter has been knocked back for some reason. So you can probably expect the ammonia to continue to rise as you'll effectively be doing a fish-in cycle. So be prepared to do water changes to keep the ammonia under 0.25ppm until it recovers.

 

[dsiegel13]

Thanks everyone. When I said I changed the filter, I should have said that I changed the filter cartridge, not the whole filter or the bio-wheel... sorry about that.

I did a 50% water change this morning with filtered water and I plan on checking the level this afternoon. None of the fish have red gills or any change in behavior.

I have a clay bottom that is heavily planted, I mean there is barely any room between the plants. I do not vacuum the bottom as the last time I did that the clay broke up and it took 2 days for the dust to settle, plus w/ all the plants, there is really no exposed clay to vacuum.

thanks again for all the help.

Edit: I did a 90% water change this afternoon, and the ammonia level dropped to .5 ppm, which is much better than the 8 ppm from this morning... so hopefully another water change will do the trick.