Ammonia High

[Lewiscouse]

Yeah I thought that was a good sign but I will test water later and if any rise or still the same I will perform a 50% water change

 

[4seasons]

If you have .5ppm of nitrite a 50% water change won't get you where you need to be. The goal is 0ppm or at least so low that our test kits don't read any. A 50% water change (assuming that your tap water has 0 ammonia or nitrite in it) will cut your reading in half to .25ppm. If you did a 80% change instead you can cut that to .1ppm or less than the API kit will measure as well as dropping the ammonia level to a to low to show point as well. As your first bacteria get established in your cycle and your ammonia levels start dropping on their own the nitrite levels will start climbing fast. It then takes a while to get the 2nd phase of cycling to kick in and get those nitrite eating bacteria to eat 3 times as much as the ammonia eating bacteria do. In the mean time it takes 3 times as much water changes to keep up with nitrite levels as it did to keep up with ammonia.

 

[Lewiscouse]

Explain again I'm not sure what you mean?

 

[Lewiscouse]

I've done a 50% change and ammonia is 0 and nitrites 0 but my nitrates are still 20ppm is this correct?

 

[fluttermoth]

Sounds right.

Your tap water most likely has nitrate in it, it does in most places, so you'll never be able to get the tank nitrate below that level (unless you have loads of plants and few fish, or start messing around with nitrate filters). 0ppm is a perfectly acceptable level anyway.

It might be worth testing your tap water for nitrate, just so you know what your 'base level' is.

 

[Lewiscouse]

Yeah good idea

 

[Aqua Tom]

Sounds right.

Your tap water most likely has nitrate in it, it does in most places, so you'll never be able to get the tank nitrate below that level (unless you have loads of plants and few fish, or start messing around with nitrate filters). 0ppm is a perfectly acceptable level anyway.

It might be worth testing your tap water for nitrate, just so you know what your 'base level' is.

Just to add, my tap water nitrate level is 40ppm, its not an issue.


Tom

 

[Lewiscouse]

I thought the cycling process required nitrates, so it's not an issue?

 

[fluttermoth]

Cycling doesn't require nitrate, that's just the end product of the biological process (ammonia > nitrite > nitrate). The point is, is that nitrate is only toxic to fish at relatively high levels, unlike ammonia and nitrate. You only need to worry about nitrate if it's up in the 60-80ppm level, but it's not going to have a chance to get anywhere near that while you're still cycling.

 

[4seasons]

Explain again I'm not sure what you mean?

If you are talking about the water change bringing the ammonia and nitrite levels down it is simple math. All water has some impurities in it. So when we say a fish tank has 2 ppm ammonia what we are saying is for every million parts of water 2 of them are ammonia. So if you want to cut that ammount in half you would take out half of the water and put the same amount of pure water back in. Now what comes out of our tap is far from pure water so unless you have no ammonia in your tap water it will take more than a 50% water change to cut the ammonia level in half. The same goes for nitrite. If you want to drop from .5ppm to .25ppm you need a 50% water change with pure water. Now if your tap water already contains some ammonia or nitrite (which it may very well, you have to check it) you will have to do more than a 50% water change to cut it in half. No water change will ever get you below the ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate that your tap water already contains.

Now if you were confused by the comment that it will be more work to get rid of nitrite than ammonia, that is based on the assumption that you have grown enough bacteria in your filter to clear the ammonia and don't yet have a good nitrite eating bacteria established yet. The ammonia eating bacteria produce nitrite but they make 2-3 times as much nitrite as the amount of ammonia they eat. So if you have trouble keeping ammonia levels down, now that nitrites are climbing, they are really going to give you fits. Exactly how fast the bacteria grow and how long the whole process take depends on too many factors to judge and is really a discussion for the scientist.

Also our test kits (I'm assuming you are using the API master test kit) aren't super accurate. Anything that relies on "drops" is just going to give ballpark figures anyway. What they will tell us is approximately what is going on in our tanks, what progress our nitrogen cycle has made, and just how desperate a situation our fish may be in.

 

[Lewiscouse]

No I let my tanks ammonia levels spiral out of control and I'm just getting on top of it and adding media from my established tank, Im on top of it now as my fish have seriously changed there character and my levels are now at 0 except my nitrate which is 20ppm which I'm not bothered about

 

[CezzaXV]

All sounding good for the moment.

If you've added media from an established filter you'll want to keep an eye out for nitrites too. Not that you wouldn't normally, but with that media they'll likely be turning up soon. Treat nitrite the same way you do ammonia.

 

[Lewiscouse]

Yeah thanks for the advice

 

[Lewiscouse]

So how comes my tanks now gone from ammonia spikes to nitrite spikes?

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Because your ammonia-eating bacteria have turned it into nitrite and your nitrite-eating bacteria haven't developed enough to process it all. This is the normal order of things